Should Constitutions Protect All Sentient Beings? - John Adenitire & Raffael Fasel

Raffael is University Assistant Professor in Public Law at the Cambridge Law Faculty and Fellow of Jesus College. He specialises in public law, with a particular interest in constitutional theory, human rights law, and animal rights law. Raffael is co-founder and co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law @CCARL_charity.

John is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at Queen Mary University London ‪@QMUL‬ and a Co-Director of the Forum on Decentering the Human. He is also a trustee of ‪@HumanistsUK‬. John's research is primarily focused on Public Law, Legal Theory, and Comparative Constitutional Law, with distinct specialisations in conscientious exemptions and including non-human animals in constitutional law.

Together, they are the co-authors of "Animals and the Constitution: Towards Sentience-Based Constitutionalism." (https://academic.oup.com/book/59826)

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: https://apple.co/391khQO & https://open.spotify.com/show/3c9OG5M....

Full show notes are at: https://sentientism.info/

00:00 Clips
RF: “Constitutions are anthropocentric, right? They are centred around human interests and they privilege human interests… 98% of all governed sentient beings in the UK are non-human animals.”
JW: “The yelp of a puppy or a cow resisting being dragged into a slaughterhouse or a wild animal following its migration pattern or an animal following a choice test where it, in an embodied way, expresses a preference. Those are political expressions. Those can be reflected through representatives but even through direct processes as well.”
JA: “We will go from a use paradigm, that's how they are considered, to a co-citizen or co-subject or co-fellow earthling.”
00:57 Welcome
John's appearance on Sentientism #7:    • From Sunday School Teacher to Sentientist ...  
03:30 John and Raffael Intros
06:33 What Are Constitutions and Why Are They Important?
Maneesha Deckha, Jane Kotzman, Josh Milburn, Michael Dorf Sentientism episodes and our Sentientist Law playlist:    • Sentientist Law  
RF: “…Constitutions are the most fundamental legal documents… the apex documents that a legal system has… that contain its most fundamental principles…”
“…very difficult to amend those principles and indeed some constitutions don't even allow the amendment of certain very fundamental things like democracy or human rights.”
“…the most important legal tools that exist if we're interested in in doing anything, including improving the lives of animals.”
“They intersect with political philosophy. What should states be doing to improve animals lives?”
“Amazing work… legal theory of animal rights… Habeus Corpus legal cases… to have chimpanzees and elephants and other animals recognised as fundamental rights holders.”
“But, in our view, too few people have looked at the most fundamental of legal documents [the constitution] and how it can be rethought in a way that gives due concern… to all sentient beings.”
JW: “…Rather than seeing the constitution as the top I actually prefer to see it as the foundation on which everything in the legal system is built.”
“…constitutions in most parts of the world are documents…. but one other thing that we do in the book is to look at constitutional principles which are not always documented… implied principles such as democracy, the rule of law… protection of fundamental rights, the principle of proportionality…”
“Some of these constitutional principles… are not even explicitly mentioned in some constitutions but they nevertheless are so core, so important…”
06:33 What Are Constitutions and Why Are They Important?
21:03 Why Include Sentient Beings and Who Is Sentient?
30:15 What Protections Do Constitutions Provide?
38:52 What Rights Should Constitutions Provide?
58:52 Trade-offs and Proportionality
01:06:18 Rule of Law
01:13:25 Democracy
01:21:41 How Would the World Change Under Sentientist Constitutions?
01:26:45 How Would a Sentientist Constitution Affect Human Sentients?
01:29:35 How Do We Make This Happen?
01:33:00 Follow Raffael and John:
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/people/aca...
  / johnadenitire  
https://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/acad...
https://bsky.app/profile/raffaelfasel...
https://academic.oup.com/book/59826

& much more... see https://sentientism.info/ for full notes.
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