Overview

On February 18, 2016, Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program and Islamic Legal Studies Program held a workshop on the intersection of animals, religion, and constitutional law. Presentations addressed constitutional theory, institutional design, and case studies grounded in the constitutional experiences of particular jurisdictions or regions. Participants discussed topics that involve issues of religious law, such as the relevance of the halal and kosher debates to constitutional developments regarding animals (e.g., in Europe), and the religious dimensions of the constitutional protections for animals (e.g., in India).

Participants

Randall Abate (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University College of Law)

Ebrahim Afsah (University of Copenhagen) – Ritual Slaughter in the Modern Constitutional State: A Brief History of the European Discourse

Ariel L. Bendor (Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law) and Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg (Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law) – Constitutional Protections of Animals: Universal Complexities, Israeli Perspectives

David Bilchitz (University of Johannesburg) – Can the Environmental Rights in the South African Constitution Offer Protection for the Interests of Animals?

Charlotte Blattner (PhD candidate, Law Faculty of the University of Basel) – The Comparative Constitutional Law of Cows and Milk – India and the United States

Alex Bruce (ANU College of Law)

Mathilde Cohen (University of Connecticut) – The Comparative Constitutional Law of Cows and Milk – India and the United States

Erin Delaney (Northwestern University Law School) – Discussant

Jessica Eisen (SJD Candidate, Harvard Law School) – Discussant

David Fontana (George Washington University Law School) – Discussant

Pamela Frasch (Lewis & Clark Law School)

Chris Green (Harvard University)

Kathy Hessler (Lewis & Clark Law School) – Discussant

Jayna Kothari (Centre for Law & Policy Research, Bangalore) – Jurisdictional Presentation

Peter Li (University of Houston-Downtown)

Mara Malagodi (City University London) – Holy Cows, Hinduism, and Constitutional Identity in Nepal

André Nollkaemper (University of Amsterdam) – Balancing Animal Welfare and Human Rights: A Case Study of European Practice on Ritual Slaughter without Stunning

Enyinna Nwauche (Rhodes University Grahamstown, South Africa) – The Right to Ritual Slaughter in Africa: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis

Ido Porat (College of Law and Business) – Proportionality and the Constitutionality of Ritual Animal Slaughter and Male Circumcision

Natalie Prosin (Animals, Law, and Religion Project, Harvard University)

Yaniv Roznai (University of Haifa) – Constitutional Zoology

Shira Shmuely (PhD candidate, MIT)

Kristen Stilt (Harvard University) – Constitutional Animal Protection in Egypt and the Making of a Social Movement

Saskia Stucki (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) – Jurisdictional Presentation

Katie Sykes (Thompson Rivers University) – Jurisdictional Presentation

Mark Tushnet (Harvard University) – Discussant

Delci Winders (Harvard University)