Should All Animals be Treated Equally? Discrimination in Animal Rights Law

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Law - Philosophy, History and Sociology of Law, grade: 1,0, University of Helsinki, course: Animal Rights Law, language: English, abstract: In the following paper reasons for the preference of certain animals will be described and discussed. The first point of analysis will be the definitions of animals in legal scholarship and in actual laws regarding animals. After these fundamental explanations the goal will be to analyse if these "differentiations" can be justified by using scientific methods, legal reasoning and if they are necessary to achieve the larger goals of the institution of animal rights. The question on which everything relies on is what can be regarded as an animal. First, the focus will be on the scientific definition of an animal, then we will dive into the legal adaptions of animals.