Assignment: Summer School Animal Law, Rights, and Representation

Instructions

The length of the paper is 3.000 words, max. 5000 words (footnotes included; bibliography and list of
caselaw excluded).

Texts must be written consistently in either British or another usage of English (Australian, Canadian
or US English). They may not contain spelling or serious grammar mistakes.

The paper must be original and personal work. The use of artificial intelligence to write parts of the
paper will be considered fraud. When referring to legislation, caselaw and doctrinal or other sources,
make sure that you cite these in footnotes, using the OSCOLA guidelines (or any other reference
style, used consistently throughout the paper). Failure to do so will be considered plagiarism and
may lead to a fraud procedure.

In your paper, you should refer to at least three materials of the Summer School, either 1) material
on blackboard or 2) the lectures (please refer to the lecture in the footnote, stating: “[name
lecturer], [date], [title lecture], Summer School Animal Law, Rights and Representation.”)

Your paper should be a discussion paper on one of the statements below. You can choose to a)
defend the statement, b) attack the statement, or c) discuss both arguments in favour and against,
reaching a more nuanced conclusion. Please make use of subheadings and structure the paper in a
logical way.

Please submit the paper before the deadline of July 21, 2023 (23.59). The paper must be submitted,
in word-format, through email at eva.bernetkempers@uantwerpen.be. Late submissions will not be
accepted and result in a fail.

The paper will be marked with a grade between 0-20 points.

Please choose the topic for your paper from the following list.

1. ‘Animal rights and animal welfare are incompatible’. Discuss this statement.
2. ‘There is no morally relevant difference between humans and other animals, meaning that
excluding other animals from the category of the legal person is a form of speciesism’.
Discuss this statement.
3. ‘The way in which animal rights have been recognized in the Estrellita-case, provides a good
example of fundamental animal rights recognition.’ Discuss this statement.
4. ‘The eradication of Invasive Alien Species is an unethical practice that needs to be brought to
an end as soon as possible’. Discuss this statement.
5. ‘Nobody is able to represent animals in court, because we can never really know what an
animal wants’. Discuss this statement.