Animal trial

Common card · No. 260288

In legal history, an animal trial is a trial of a non-human animal. These trials were conducted in both secular and ecclesiastic courts. Records of such trials show that they took place in Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. The legal archives on animal cases are spotty. France has preserved significant documentation, but, more generally, extant records do not permit a comprehensive analysis of the prevalence and distribution of these cases at different points in time and place. In the modern era, non-human animals cannot be held culpable for an act in most criminal justice systems on the grounds that they lack moral agency.

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