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ANIMAL AND SLAVE IN ROMAN LAW. TAXONOMIC ISSUES RELATED TO THE NOTION OF RES

R. Garetto

Abstract

A new awareness around animal welfare has risen in the last decades. While in the past the animal used to be considered as res to exploit, nowadays many people see them as life companions. This new condition of the domestic animal originates, from a legal perspective, significant questions, and it can have non-negligible implications. Some scholars believe that in order to give more effective protection to animals a form of legal subjectivity has to be recognized. Such a relevant change needs anyway a deeper reflection on a taxonomic plane. The notion of res of the Roman law can still be considered the basis of the contemporary legal concept of the animal as an “object” related to a property right. The Roman notion of res never implied the characteristic of inanimate object. On the contrary both animals and slaves were considered res, despite their nature of living being. The analogy between animal and slave in Roman law is significant also on another plane. The animal has a sensitivity. Its sensitivity often is considered, in the contemporary debate, as a reason to change the legal status of the animal. Actually in the Roman culture the sensitivity of slaves and animals was incontrovertible, and that did not affected their legal classification as res. The process that led to the ban of slavery in Roman law was not based on the sensitivity of the slave, but on his human nature.

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