Do animals have legal rights? This pioneering book tells readers everything they need to know about animal rights law.

Using straightforward examples from over 30 legal systems from both the civil and common law traditions, and based on popular courses run by the authors at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights, the book takes the reader from the earliest anti-cruelty laws to modern animal welfare laws, to recent attempts to grant basic rights and personhood to animals. To help readers understand this legal evolution, it explains the ethics, legal theory, and social issues behind animal rights and connected topics such as property, subjecthood, dignity, and human rights.

The book’s companion website (bloomsbury.pub/animal-rights-law) provides access to briefs on the latest developments in this fast-changing area, and gives readers the tools to investigate their own legal systems with a list of key references to the latest cases, legislation, and jurisdiction-specific bibliographic references.

Rich in exercises and study aids, this easy-to-use introduction is a prime resource for students from all disciplines and for anyone else who wants to understand how animals are protected by the law.

I think this is an absolutely fantastic book and will be a great resource for students. -- Russil Durrant * Victoria University of Wellington *
Animal Rights Law is a compelling book that surveys the broad landscape of animal rights theoretical and practical discourse in a manner that engages with the needs of beginners and those coming to the subject with a limited knowledge of animal rights, while also providing sufficient depth to interest those with more experience of animal rights discourse who will find the text a useful reference to key debates, case law and legislation and theoretical positions … It is a timely book, and the authors are commended for having covered a challenging topic in such a compelling read. -- Angus Nurse, Anglia Ruskin University, UK * Environmental Law Review *

Raffael N Fasel is Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, UK, and a Senior Researcher in Law at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Sean C Butler is a Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, UK, and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, UK.