Schopenhauer, Judicial Compassion, and the Case of Cecilia the Chimpanzee

Over the last decades, a growing body of literature has focused on the role of compassion in legal decision making. To this respect, judicial compassion has been almost exclusively thematized in relation to human animals. In this paper, I claim that compassion shows itself especially relevant when judges should decide controversial cases involving animals. Drawing on Schopenhauer’s account of compassion, I contend that this emotion in particular can contribute to good decision making. To illustrate the argument, I analyze a renowned case from Argentinian jurisprudence: the case of Cecilia the chimpanzee.