DISCUȚII RELATIVE LA CALITATEA DE SUBIECȚI DE DREPT A ANIMALELOR

Reflections on the moral and legal status of the animal, its cognitive abilities, its differences,
essential or not, with humans, have nourished human thinking since ancient times; source of debate
also today are a lot of questions: can we kill animals, we can eat them, we can use them in our
activity, both in the field and in laboratories, do animals have rights, are they subjects of law? Ever
since Roman law, the animal was considered from legal point of view, considering only the faculty of
man’s appropriation as a subject of law; the main status of animal remains that of reification, their
interests being most often ignored for the benefit of humans’ interests. This status embraced by
doctrine, praised legally throughout the different civilizations and which has lasted until today, could
be maintained by virtue of the „natural” power of human domination exercised over the rest of living
beings also through the Cartesian animal–machine theory, which was translated into law by the
animal–thing theory.