Marina Vitoria Baptista Rosa
Marina Vitoria Baptista Rosa is currently a Ph.D. candidate in animal law at the University of Helsinki, while also serving as coordinator for the National Association of Animal Lawyers in Brazil. In most countries, animals are not protected by constitutions, but only by animal welfare statutes. However, eleven countries do protect animals in their constitutions. Among those, Brazil is the only one with a broad-standing regime and favorable procedural rules that allow advocates to act on behalf of animals and achieve concrete benefits for them through the legal system. CAF awarded Marina a grant for her project, “The Impacts of Protecting Animals in the Constitution: Insights from the Brazilian Experience,” which consists of researching and publishing outreach materials related to recent positive developments in Brazil for animals as a result of both a constitutional provision dedicated to animal protection and strategic litigation efforts. Marina’s work also bridges the language barrier through her translations of some of the main legal works written in Portuguese. Marina divides her time between Helsinki, Finland; Sheffield, England; and Brazil.
Marina’s paper, entitled “Animals as Subjects of Rights: Brazil’s Constitutional Blueprint,” was published in the LEOH: Journal of Animal Law, Ethics, and One Health, in 2024. The abstract reads:
In most countries, animals typically lack constitutional protection and rely solely on animal welfare statutes. Currently, only eleven countries worldwide have a constitutional provision dedicated to the protection of animals. Among these countries, Brazil stands out as the sole nation where the constitutional provision is directly applicable and supported by an extensive standing regime that enables diverse actors to invoke this protection in manifold judicial proceedings. This legal framework has fostered the development of innovative legal doctrines and advocacy initiatives over the past few decades. Consequently, while the concept of animals as legal persons or rights holders remains an aspirational goal in much of the Western world, in Brazil, animals are already recognised as subjects of rights. Despite that, the international awareness of the Brazilian experience remains limited due to most of the related literature being published in Portuguese. In face of the growing momentum of the animal constitutionalism movement worldwide, this article seeks to shed light on how a constitutional mandate has facilitated the establishment of animals as legal subjects deserving recognition in the legal system.