Animal Law Podcast #81: Fundamental Rights for Swiss Primates, Yes or No?

02/23/22 • 71 min

Welcome to the Animal Law Podcast. This is Mariann Sullivan and this week’s guest is Charlotte Blattner, a Swiss lawyer and professor of law, who will be talking about primates in Switzerland and a recent ballot initiative held in Basel initiated by the Swiss organization Sentience regarding their rights. Charlotte and I will discuss this very recent effort, the pluses and minuses of using ballot initiatives, which are an important part of Swiss law, to promote the rights of animals, the meaning of the unsuccessful vote and why it should nevertheless be seen as an important step forward, and the implications of this effort for the global fight for fundamental rights for all animals.

Charlotte E. Blattner, Dr. iur., LL.M., is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Institute for Public Law of the University of Berne in Switzerland. She obtained her doctorate in 2016 at the interface of international and animal law as part of the doctoral program “Law and Animals” at the University of Basel. Her dissertation project, Protecting Animals Within and Across Borders: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and the Challenges of Globalization, was published open access by Oxford University Press. She also authored Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? together with Kendra Coulter and Will Kymlicka and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Law School on a project titled “Environmental Law Beyond Anthropocentrism.” She is currently working on a project related to the complex and urgent challenges that climate change poses to Swiss constitutional and administrative law.

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The Animal Law Podcast is proud to partner with The Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy, Inc., a US-based national independent think tank pursuing a paradigm shift in human responsibility towards, and value of, non-human animals by advancing animal law, animal policy, and related interdisciplinary studies.

As the Animal Law Podcast 2021 Exclusive Sponsor, the The Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy, Inc is dedicated to producing and disseminating outstanding, independent, academic, and public policy research and programming; and pursuing projects and initiatives focused on advancing law and policy pertaining to animals.

The Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy is excited to share a new FREE resource: The Brooks Animal Law Digest – CANADA EDITION! This premier online publication offers in-depth and up-to-date coverage on Canada’s most important animal law and policy issues. It is published twice monthly as a collaborative effort with the University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s research support.

Like the Brooks Animal Law Digest – US Edition, the Canadian Digest serves as a resource for anyone interested in learning more about the field of animal law – either as a high-level overview of developments, or as a jumping off point for digging into a specific current issue in the field. All content will be accessible on the Brooks Institute website and spotlights via email twice monthly.

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Click here to subscribe to the free Brooks Animal Law Digest – CANADA EDITION.

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Don’t forget to also listen to the award-winning, weekly signature OHH podcast — now in its twelfth glorious year!

Previous Episode

Animal Law Podcast #80: Teaching Animal Rights

Welcome to the Animal Law Podcast. This is Mariann Sullivan, and this week we will be doing something a little bit different. Sherry Colb is a professor at Cornell Law School where, among many other things, she teaches an animal centric course that, to my knowledge, is quite different from most of the courses relating to animals taught at law schools. Unlike the course that I teach, which is all about the all-too-fragile law purporting to protect animals, she focuses on the reasons people should attend to animals and, specifically, the reasons they shouldn’t be eating them, or using them for other purposes. Since I had never run across a course quite like this in any law school, I invited Sherry to come on and talk about it, in the hopes that other law schools might adopt this approach, in addition to the more traditional animal law courses. After our conversation, I was so glad I did and I think you will feel the same way.

Sherry F. Colb earned an A.B. from Columbia College (Valedictorian) and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before joining the Rutgers University faculty, she clerked for Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. She is currently the C.S. Wong Professor of Law at Cornell University. She has co-authored a book about the connection between animal rights and zygote rights, Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights, and a book about animal rights, Mind If I Order the Cheeseburger? And Other Questions People Ask Vegans. She composes a bi-weekly column on Justia’s Verdict as well as regular posts on the blog, Dorf on Law.

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Click here to subscribe to the free Brooks Animal Law Digest – CANADA EDITION.

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Next Episode

Animal Law Podcast #82: Maybe Cruelty Laws CAN Protect Farmed Animals!

On this week’s podcast I will be talking to Will Lowrey of Animal Outlook about a case that really has everyone in the animal law community talking. Several years ago Animal Outlook conducted an undercover investigation of Martin Farms, in Pennsylvania, a dairy farm that proved to be the locus of much hideous cruelty to animals. Some of that cruelty was what we often call “gratuitous,” i.e., not in the interests of the farm, just plain old ugliness. But a good deal of it consisted of the way Martin Farms conducted its business, such as the horrendous suffering inflicted upon calves in the “dehorning” process. After years of legal effort by Animal Outlook the case ended up in an appellate court in Pennsylvania which said, “yeah, this is bad”. Well, they said a lot more than that and much of it implicates one of the most nefarious legal tricks of the trade that the industry has used to avoid consequences for their illegal treatment of animals, the “customary” or “normal” farming practices exemption.

Will Lowrey is Legal Counsel for Animal Outlook. On behalf of Animal Outlook, Will is engaged in numerous lawsuits against the government and animal agriculture using a wide range of legal strategies including administrative challenges, false advertising, and animal cruelty laws. Will also supports Animal Outlook’s investigations work. Prior to joining Animal Outlook, Will clerked in the Superior Court of New Jersey and interned with the Virginia Attorney General’s Animal Law Unit and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Before law school, Will worked a lengthy corporate career and, in his free time, helped run several non-profits focused on a variety of animal issues.

Resources:

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This episode of The Animal Law Podcast is brought to you in part by The Animal Law Conference. Co-hosted by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis and Clark Law School — this year’s conference marks the thirtieth anniversary of this premier animal law event. Save the date for November 4-6, 2022!

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Click here to subscribe to the free Brooks Animal Law Digest – CANADA EDITION.

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