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Bridging the gap between jurisprudence and questions of legal status

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Joshua JowittORCiD

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Edward Elgar, 2025.

For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.

Abstract

All legal scholarship makes theoretical assumptions – some of these are acknowledged, but others are not. The purpose of this chapter is to attempt to bridge the gap between scholarship concerned with the legal status of nonhuman animals and canonical debates in jurisprudence. It is hoped that in doing so we can more clearly understand what assumptions are being made in contemporary scholarship on legal status so that we can be certain our theoretical understanding of the concept is as full as possible. The chapter comprises of three main sections. The first will demonstrate that, in holding that legal status is able to be granted by legal officials and that their discretion is absolute in this regard, both orthodox and contemporary understandings of legal status presuppose a commitment to the sources thesis that a natural lawyer might reject. The second offers a natural law account of extensional beliefs associated with legal status grounded in the Radbruch formula, and the final section considers the impact of Hart’s ‘Open Texture of Language’ and Hohfeldian theory on our understanding of the concept of legal status.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Jowitt J

Editor(s): Pietrzykowski, T; Wahlberg, B

Publication type: Book Chapter

Publication status: Published

Book Title: Research Handbook in Animal Law and Animal Rights

Year: 2025

Pages: 142-159

Print publication date: 15/09/2025

Online publication date: 15/09/2025

Acceptance date: 13/05/2024

Publisher: Edward Elgar

URL: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/research-handbook-on-animal-law-and-animal-rights-9781035324873.html?srsltid=AfmBOorjfFcUxZbu1pkCeoOHAdJAl7Bfv9FYTt8vHw38Btr1q20eAmse

ePrints DOI: 10.57711/2afp-cr26

Data Access Statement: It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item

ISBN: 9781035324873

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