Paper's abstract

Florence Burgat, The Person, a Flexible Legal Category that could Accommodate Animals
Faced with the division between people and things that governs the law, what is the argumentative strategy of the defenders of animal rights? The rights to be granted to animals are fundamental rights and specific rights. The "scientific evidence" of the cognitive skills of animals is largely mobilized and held to be a security by some animal rights advocates. How should we understand this? We must ask which concept could best describe animals in law. We will show in what way that of (non human) "person" presents both the technical advantage of not disturbing the bipartite division of law and the epistemological advantage of being normative and prescriptive before being descriptive; indeed it is not necessary to look like an autonomous and responsible adult human to be legally held as a "person".

Key Words : animal person category
t. 59, 2017: p. 175-191

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