Peter T. Leeson, George Mason University Department of Economics, has published Animal Trials. Here's the abstract.
For 250 yearsFrench, Italian, and Swiss ecclesiastic courts tried insects and rodents for property crimes as legal persons under the same laws and according to the same procedures they used to try actual persons. I argue that the Catholic Church used animal trials to increase tithe revenues where tithe evasion threatened to erode them. Animal trials achieved this by bolstering citizens' belief in the validity of Church punishments for tithe evasion: estrangement from God through sin, excommunication, and anathema. Animal trials permitted ecclesiastics to evidence their supernatural sanctions' legitimacy regardless of these trials' outcomes. They strengthened citizens' belief that the Church's imprecations were real, allowing ecclesiastics to reclaim jeopardized tithe revenue.
The full text is not available from SSRN.
Animal trials weren't that uncommon. See also
Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France (Brill, 1993), at 100-133.
Esther Cohen, Law, Folklore, and Animal Lore, Past and Present (1986) at 110.
Jesse Elvin, Responisibility, 'Bad Luck,' and Delinquent Animals: Law as a Means of Explaining Tragedy, Journal of Criminal Law, December 2009.
E. P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (Faber and Faber, 1987, repr. 1906).
Philip Jamieson, Animal Liability In Early Law, 19 Cambrian Law Review 45 (1988).
Nicholas Humphrey, Bugs and Beasts Before the Law, in The Mind Made Flesh 235-254 (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Warning: If you are an animal lover, read with extreme caution, or don't read at all. The accounts of what people have done to innocent animals, out of stupidity, ignorance, folly, narrow-mindedness, or religious fervor, are truly stomach turning.
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