Where the Wild Things Are: animal autonomy in EU Law

De Witte, Floris ORCID: 0000-0001-8068-7110 (2023) Where the Wild Things Are: animal autonomy in EU Law. Common Market Law Review, 60 (2). pp. 391-430. ISSN 0165-0750

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Abstract

This article discusses how EU law makes sense of the encounters between wild animals and humans. Using the case law of the ECJ that involves wolves and hamsters, this article suggests that EU law is faced with the complex challenge of creating legal categories that can articulate and reflect animal autonomy. Two such legal categories are traced. A first focuses on animal agency and their mobility, assimilating – in legal terms – the movement of wild animals to that of persons crossing borders. A second focuses on animal alterity, that is, the fundamental otherness of wild animals. It is argued that only the latter allows us to make legally legible the conditions under which wildness manifests itself – not as a counterpoint to humanness, but as a meeting between species.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2022 Wolters Kluwer.
Divisions:	Law
Subjects:	K Law S Agriculture > SF Animal culture
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2022 10:12
Last Modified:	28 Mar 2025 14:18
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/117400

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