6 Legal Personality of Animals

The classical position: animals are objects of law, never subjects — a thing over which persons have rights (ownership of a buffalo), and at most a beneficiary of protective duties owed by humans to other humans or to the community (anti-cruelty statutes). Historically, animals were even prosecuted in medieval Europe (pigs tried for homicide) — a chapter now treated as a curiosity that shows law's capacity for literal-minded folly.Modern developments that stretch but do not break the classical rule:• Anti-cruelty legislation: criminalizes unnecessary suffering (Nepal's Criminal Code 2074 contains provisions against cruelty to animals in defined terms; dedicated animal-welfare legislation has been in policy discussion). The duty is owed to the State, not to the animal.• Animal as "victim" rhetoric in some modern judgments and statutes (especially in civil-law systems concerning companion animals), and courts' refusal to treat animals as mere things in custody disputes — yet without conferring standing on the animal itself.• Guardianship/adoption language in animal welfare regimes; trust law in some jurisdictions permits "pet trusts" — the animal is a permitted beneficiary object through a human trustee.• Rights-of-nature movement: rivers have been declared legal persons (the Whanganui River in New Zealand being the celebrated statutory example, with human guardians exercising the river's personhood). This is the strongest modern challenge to the subject/object dichotomy and makes an excellent…