In Swizerland Animals Will Not Be Apointed Legal Council
March 8th, 2010
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The ridiculous thing isn’t that Switzerland is denying animals the right to an attorney to represent their interest, the ridiculous thing is that they almost did! 70% of the Swiss people turned out not to be quite that insane, but the politicians of Switzerland apparently took the idea pretty seriously – seriously enough to call for a referendum on the issue.
Switzerland rejects move to provide lawyers for animals
Voters in Switzerland have rejected a proposal to introduce a nationwide system of state-funded lawyers to represent animals in court.Animal rights groups had proposed the move, saying that without lawyers to argue the animals’ case, many instances of cruelty were going unpunished.
But the measure was rejected by around 70% of voters in a referendum.
Opponents had argued that Switzerland did not need more legislation. The government had opposed the idea.
Voters were almost certainly swayed by worries about how much such a system might cost taxpayers, and by objections from Switzerland’s farmers already struggling with reduced subsidies and falling milk prices.
Switzerland already has some of the strictest animal welfare legislation in the world.
Pigs, budgies, goldfish and other social animals cannot be kept alone; horses and cows must have regular exercise outside in summer and winter; and dog owners have to take training courses to learn how to care for their pets.
Yes, it is true that Switzerland has some of the strongest (and I’d argue ridiculous) laws when it comes to animal rights. I’ll be the first to admit that I really like dogs, but even with that bias, I have to wonder if it’s really a good thing to make owners take a training course on how to own a dog. The reason is this: There are a lot of dogs in shelters around the world and it’s very hard to get them adopted. Making prospective owners jump through hoops like going to classes on it might assure that they take care of their pets well, but it could also hurt the ability to place animals with care givers.
The law indeed does care about the social development of goldfish. (Yes, seriously, that law does exist in Switzerland.) Indeed, the way the law is written, any animal which is considered to be “social” in any way must be accommodated. Where does it stop? Well considering a goldfish doesn’t have all that much of a brain (by mammal standards it hardly even qualifies as a brain), one might wonder whether these laws could be applied to the little mites that live in your eyelash follicles.
Of course, despite this, you can still legally kill animals and eat them in Switzerland. You could catch a fish, yank it into your boat and wack it over the head then fry it up. However, you can’t keep a “social fish” alive in a bowl by itself – it could get lonely. Seems a little inconsistent, doesn’t it? This is the country that came up with the idea of plant rights, however.
To be fair, the issue of lawyers appointed for animals was supposed to be for abused animals. (No word on whether goldfish would quality.) The idea being to assure that the animals’ rights were well protected and its best interests considered by giving the animal an individual legal council. Still, although I can understand having some reasonable animal rights laws (for example, protecting animals from unnecessarily cruel treatment or harm without good cause), but this is just a bit over the top.
Then again, it could be worse. The measure could have actually passed.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 1:18 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Just LAME, Misc, Not Even Wrong, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 8th, 2010 at 1:44 am
There are precious few things that I see eye to eye with Christian Fundamentalists on, but drawing a sharp line between humans, and the rest of the life-forms on this planet is one of them.
While is see no point in tolerating abject and pointless cruelty to animals, it is only because such activities are generally symptomatic of some deeper, even less savory behavior that may represent a more serious danger. As such they should be investigated, and stopped before the underlying problem asserts itself.
Nevertheless, the key determinant here must be a close examination of the reasons and motivations, and the judgment on the issue of mistreatment of the animal should be based on that factor alone.
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March 8th, 2010 at 2:04 am
When the state prosecutes someone for animal cruelty, isn’t the prosecuting attorney acting, in de facto, on behalf of the animal already? What additional function would paying another lawyer to represent the animal serve? Providing legal council sure as hell isn’t it… unless they think pets are somehow capable of understanding and making decisions on the legal council provided.
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March 8th, 2010 at 3:04 am
Brian-M said:
Well I’m not sure the extent of the law (my cartoon implies that an animal would get defense concil, but I don’t know if that would be the case.) However, in the case of child abuse, the prosecutor is not concerned with the child as much as punishing the parents. The prosecutor is acting as part of the *criminal* courts.
Therefore, there if there is a legal dispute as to the child’s best interest, it’s possible that a seperate attorney would be appointed to represent the child in the family court and social welfare issues.
For example, if a parent was found to be abusive and sent to prison, there could be a dispute as to whether the other parent is fit to care for the child, whether the child should go to a foster home, whether they should live with the grand parents.
I think that would be the kind of situation. The animal would have legal council to represent its best interests in terms of gardianship issues. Also, there’s the possibility that an abuser could be sued in civil court for damages or to provide for the care of the child (or in this case, er, animal)
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March 8th, 2010 at 3:10 am
Well, I know in some cases, there are victim’s advocacy attorneys, who work with the prosecutor, but while the prosecution’s primary job is to enforce the law, the advocate would be concerned with things that apply to the victim, such as orders of protection and getting restitution and that kind of thing.
I guess that would be the parallel? I mean, some kind of victim representation sometimes that makes sense, but for animals?
Did you see this part of the ap story?
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March 8th, 2010 at 3:49 am
It makes me wonder about something. Switzerland is a country that is pretty well off. It has a fairly well educated, mostly upper class population. It has no foreign commitments and does well economically because of its buisiness interests.
It seems to me sometimes that those who are privileged or don’t have any big things to worry about are the ones who go and invent non-existent concerns to get worked up about. It seems to be an upper class Caucasian trait more than anything else.
Perhaps the Swiss just found that they lacked any real social problems of any magnitude and therefore desperately tried to invent one? It seems like this happens sometimes.
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March 8th, 2010 at 4:18 am
Off-Topic, but have you heard of this?
eTextbooks that Professors can Edit
I posted a comment:
‘Initially sounds like a good idea, but there are foreseeable potential problems with this.
I am led to believe that there is a well-known university [www.liberty.edu] with a museum that apparently has dinosaur fossils that are labelled as dating to only a few thousand years old. I believe this is ideological pseudo-science [Intelligent design / Creationism] masquerading as science.
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_z85O0P2M
From: @1:01 to 1:05′
Note: Comments in brackets were not included in my post.
My post hasn’t been posted, after about a week!
The article on the ‘The CM Law Library Blog’, is by Sue Altmeyer [nominative determinism?]
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March 8th, 2010 at 4:53 am
just one minor thing:
you write above “but the politicians of Switzerland apparently took the idea pretty seriously – seriously enough to call for a referendum on the issue.”
afaik (and I’m not Swiss, but from a neighboring country), they have referenda on, well, basically everything. From how I know how it works (and I stress that I might be wrong), if some random group of citizens gets enough signatures together (rather low number) they can force a referendum on basically any issue (I guess provided it doesn’t go against the constitution or something).
So, in this specific case, placing blame on the politicians may be wrong.
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March 8th, 2010 at 5:21 am
The Swiss pretty much bombed and sank the credibility of their own legislative system with the recent ban on minarets.
I’m all for the legal system going after people who mistreat animals, but there has to be some sanity in how it’s done.
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March 8th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Michael said:
Well in that case I suppose it would be a case of a lot of Swiss activists with way too much time on their hands. Still, I find it disturbing that 30% would be nutty enough to support it in any case.
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March 9th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Q: I sometimes think that each person has his/her own “worry quota” which is independent of the risks he/she faces. People who really do have a lot of things to worry about (say parents who live in a neighborhood where kids get caught in gang crossfile) apply that quota to those things, whereas people who live very low-risk lives apply it to a large number of low-probability dangers (e.g. kids getting killed in mass school shootings).
It’s similar to the relationship, at the societal level, between actual health and perceived health. Members of societies that score high on objective measures of health generally rate their health as lower than members of societies that have objectively poor health. The reason turns out to be that as the overall level of health in a society rises, its members’ expectations of what good health is rise even more. If you live in a society where, for example, it’s common for kids to die of infectious disease, you’re not going to view occasional headaches or stomach aches or muscle pains or feeling run down as “ill health.” But in a society where most people don’t have to worry about serious disease until late middle age at the earliest, you start expecting that life should be free of everyday somatic complaints and that you should physically act and feel like you were perpetually seventeen.
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
“But in one high-profile case last month, Goetschel represented a dead pike after an animal protection group accused the angler who caught it of cruelty for taking 10 minutes to haul the fish in.
The angler was found not guilty.”
A lawyer with a dead fish for a client. Yep, they really will represent anyone. This guy is an embarrassment even to the legal profession.
Until they can conclusively prove that every human being with a legal problem or in an abusive situation has free access to the top-notch, best of the best, worldclass legal team (which even in Switzerland, I doubt), the notion that animals should be represented is offensively ridiculous.
Honestly though, who really wants to have the law of their country make it so they could have to defend themselves in court because it took a while to reel in a fish?
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March 10th, 2010 at 2:31 am
One of your best cartoons!
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March 14th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Bill said:
Actually, that seems like the perfect client. It won’t refuse to take the advice of its lawyer, it won’t complain about the representation, it won’t make unreasonable demands.
Sounds like the dream client, except of course for the smell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTpUVAcvWfU
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April 18th, 2010 at 1:44 am
Did you hear that Israel has banned the Ipad? seems the signal strength is a violation or so they say.
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June 21st, 2010 at 2:13 pm
I read this with a smile. But I am forced to really wonder if you meant you were leaning towards the masculine perspective, though. :3
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