The present report briefly analyses the Portuguese amendment and questions whether it will bring effective improvements for the animals themselves, especially the ones subject to institutionalised use and exploitation, such as farm and laboratory animals. This amendment was unanimously approved by the National Parliament on 22nd of December 2016 and it has inserted a number of new provisions that intend to achieve better protection for non-human animals in the country, including a set of limitations upon the owners of animals. 8/2017 of 3rd March which amended the Portuguese Civil Code.
The most recent country to have adopted such an amendment is Portugal, under Law n. The philosophical currents arguing for the recognition that non-human animals are not mere things, as Descartes had sustained, has only just in recent years had an impact on the legal qualification of animals, with countries such as France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland recognizing that non-human animals are sentient beings in their national laws. Aquí se presentan de modo breve y sin prejuicios, algunas reflexiones para contribuir a dicho debate. Sin embargo, la paulatina apertura de dichas categorías a nuevas realidades y demandas sociales, ha despertado con vigor los interrogantes sobre la noción de persona y de personalidad jurídica y de su posible extensión también a los animales. Que la sinonimia entre persona y ser humano se haya aceptado sin resquicio de duda durante siglos, tiene mucho que ver con la formación de los sistemas jurídicos del mundo occidental y la trasposición a los mismos de categorías marcadamente antropocéntricas. Resumen-Persona y Animal: una aproximación sin prejuicios El debate sobre la noción de persona y su importancia para el Derecho, es uno de los más apasionantes de los últimos años. Reflections that contribute to this debate will here be presented, briefly and without prejudice. However, the gradual widening of these categories to incorporate new ideas and social demands has vigorously awoken the questions surrounding the notion of the person and of legal personality and its possible extension to animals also. The fact that the synonymy of the person and the human being has for centuries been accepted without a shred of a doubt is largely related to the formation of legal systems in the western world and their transposition of decidedly anthropocentric categories. The debate on the notion of the person and its importance for the Law is one of the most passionate of recent years. The article concludes that introducing ‘animal dignity’ as a normative principle in the legal realm might be a desirable step towards more-than-human legalities in the Anthropocene. It also argues that dignity does not need to be a monolithic concept applicable in the same way to all animals, but can be adapted to species-specific needs to flourish: dignity is therefore more of a sliding scale, depending on the breadth and width of the needs of each animal species. in the attention given to the intrinsic legal relevance of animals and their interests. By taking a neo-pragmatic perspective (focusing on the use rather than the exact-but impossible to pinpoint-meaning of ‘animal dignity’), it seeks to demonstrate that traces of animal dignity can already be found in positive law, e.g. Through an analysis of the recent debate on the applicability, meaning(s) and implications of dignity to (non-human) animals, it will defend the argument that, despite its conceptual vagueness, the concept of ‘animal dignity’ has the potential to address some of the shortcomings in the current paradigm based in animal welfare, as well as in the often proposed paradigms based in ideas of animal rights. This article aims to assess the suitability of the concept of ‘animal dignity’ as a normative principle for the legal approach towards animals.
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