Legal Changes Influenced By The Movement
Regarding the campaign to change the status of animals as property, the animal liberation movement has seen success in several countries. In 1992, Switzerland amended its constitution to recognize animals as beings and not things. However, in 1999 the Swiss constitution was completely rewritten. A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the first European Union member to do so. The German Civil Code had been amended correspondingly in 1997. The amendment, however, has not had much impact in German legal practice yet.
The greatest success of the animal liberation movement has certainly been the granting of basic rights to five great ape species in New Zealand in 1999. Their use is now forbidden in research, testing or teaching. (It should be noted that the UK government banned experiments on great apes in 1986 ). Some other countries have also banned or severely restricted the use of non-human great apes in research.
Read more about this topic: Animal Rights Activism
Famous quotes containing the words legal, influenced and/or movement:
“In ‘70 he married again, and I having, voluntarily, assumed the legal guilt of breaking my marriage contract, do cheerfully accept the legal penalty—a life of celibacy—bringing no charge against him who was my husband, save that he was not much better than the average man.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“When things turn out pretty much as expected, parents give little thought to how much they have influenced the outcome. When things don’t turn out as expected, parents give a great deal of thought to the role they play.”
—Arlene Harder (20th century)
“Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)