Event
About the Event
This talk will explore how constitutionalism—the idea that constitutions should limit and direct government power—might evolve to include all sentient beings. Drawing on themes from their new book Animals and the Constitution, John Adenitire and Raffael Fasel will introduce the concept of “sentience-based constitutionalism,” a framework that grounds constitutional principles in respect for the interests of all governed sentient beings by rethinking rights, democracy, proportionality, and the rule of law. Through real-world examples—from Ecuador’s recognition of animal rights to Switzerland’s direct-democratic votes on primate rights—the talk will show how constitutional systems can better reflect our ethical and legal responsibilities toward animals.
About the Speakers
John Adenitire is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary, University of London. He completed his PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge. He is co-author of Animals and the Constitution: Towards Sentience-Based Constitutionalism (OUP 2025) and author of A General Right to Conscientious Exemption (CUP 2020). He co-directs the Forum on Decentering the Human at QMUL. He has held visiting research positions at Yale, Oxford, NYU, Fordham, and Chicago.
Raffael Fasel is an Assistant Professor in Public Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he is Co-Director of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law. He obtained his PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge, with a thesis on the legal theory and intellectual history of human and animal rights, for which he was awarded the Law Faculty’s Yorke Prize. He holds an LLM from Yale Law School, an MA in Philosophy from University College London, and a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Law degree from the University of Fribourg.
This event is co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Studies, the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, and the NYU Center for Bioethics.
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