University of Silesia in Katowice

The Law Library recommends the Research Handbook on Animal Law and Animal Rights – a groundbreaking handbook co-edited by Professor Tomasz Pietrzykowski. Professor Tomasz Pietrzykowski and Małgorzata Lubelska-Sazanów, PhD, who conduct research on animal rights at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Silesia, are the authors of the chapter ‘Legal dereification of animals’, devoted to the status of animals in legal systems. The publication presents the latest research, an interdisciplinary approach, and global perspectives on the development of animal law.

We are pleased to announce that the Law Library’s collection has been enriched with the latest international publication on animal law – Research Handbook on Animal Law and Animal Rights, published by Edward Elgar Publishing (United Kingdom), one of the most respected publishers of legal literature in the world.

The book was published in the prestigious Research Handbooks in Legal Theory series. Its editors are:

•  Professor Tomasz Pietrzykowski, Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Silesia,
•  Birgitta Wahlberg, Lecturer in Public Law, Åbo Akademi University (Finland).

Prominent representatives of animal law have recognised the publication. As emphasised by Joyce Tischler of Lewis & Clark Law School (USA), affectionately known as the ‘Mother of Animal Law’, who has contributed to the creation and development of this field since the 1970s: ‘Professors Pietrzykowski and Wahlberg have compiled a fresh and thoughtful look at the development of animal law, as well as the law concerning animal rights, as academic fields.‘

The textbook analyses contemporary animal law, its philosophical foundations, and its relationship to the concept of animal rights. The authors examine issues at the intersection of legal philosophy, human rights, ethics, sociology, economics, and animal welfare and behaviour sciences.

The publication discusses, among other things:

• interspecies constitutionalisation,
•  the relationship between human rights and animal rights,
•  criminal liability for crimes against animals,
• regulations concerning animals in science and food production,
• the role of strategic litigation,
• the influence of religion, culture, and economics on contemporary animal law.

Researchers from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Silesia play a special role in the Research Handbook on Animal Law and Animal Rights. The handbook includes a chapter entitled ‘Legal dereification of animals’, authored by Professor Tomasz Pietrzykowski and Dr Małgorzata Lubelska-Sazanów. The text addresses one of the key issues in contemporary research on the legal status of animals – moving away from treating them as objects and granting them an increasingly broader legal status.

Professor Pietrzykowski’s research is of great importance for the development of animal law theory and practice in Poland and abroad, combining an interdisciplinary approach encompassing law, ethics, and social sciences.

The co-author of the chapter, Dr Małgorzata Lubelska-Sazanów, was invited to become a Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in 2025 and was nominated as a member of St Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge to lecture at the University of Cambridge and the University of Brighton. Dr Lubelska-Sazanów’s research on a new legal model of animal care, which could replace the traditional institution of ownership, is of significant importance for the development of animal law in Poland and worldwide.