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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Recurso digital |
| Language: | |
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Zenodo
2026
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19384628 |
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Table of Contents:
- <p><em>This article examines the transformation of the legal status of animals through a genealogical reconstruction spanning from Roman law to contemporary legal systems. Moving beyond purely descriptive approaches, it conceptualizes animal sacrifice as a structural legal category that reveals the limits of human dominion over non-human life. Drawing on Roman legal sources, sacrificial practices, and liability frameworks, the study highlights the early emergence of a fundamental tension between the reification of animals and the imposition of normative constraints on their use and killing. This tension is then connected to modern developments in animal welfare law, particularly the recognition of animal sentience as a normative parameter and the role of European Union law. Special attention is devoted to ritual slaughter and the balancing of religious freedom and animal protection, interpreted as structurally embedded derogation regimes within pluralistic legal systems. Within this framework, the article introduces the concept of “dissimulated continuity” to explain the transition from a sacral foundation of limits on human dominion to their contemporary reformulation in ethical and scientific terms. The article argues that contemporary law does not represent a rupture with the past but rather a transformation of its underlying structures, revealing the persistent difficulty of situating animals within traditional legal categories. It concludes by suggesting the need for theoretical models capable of overcoming the subject/object dichotomy and of reconfiguring the limits of human dominion as a structural principle of the legal order.</em></p>