Legal rights for animals: aspiration or logical necessity?

Abstract

Whereas regulation relating to minimum standards of animal welfare is increasingly uncontroversial in contemporary popular discourse, the same cannot be said of viewing animals as legal persons possessing legally enforceable rights in and of themselves. The purpose of this article will be to explore this reticence and ask whether the continued anthropocentricity of legally enforceable rights is compatible with the very concept of law itself. The article will draw heavily on the moral writing of Alan Gewirth, engaging with his justification for why human beings themselves can make philosophically valid claims to be rightsholders. Taking Gewirthian ethical rationalism as providing a universally applicable hypothetical imperative which binds all agents to comply with its requirements, the article will move on to discuss the implications of the theory on our understanding of legal normativity. If we accept that the purpose of law is to guide action, and that legal normativity therefore operates at the level of practical rationality, the Gewirthian project necessarily limits the content of law to those norms which are compliant with the moral underpinning of all normative reasons for action. A necessary connection between law and morality can therefore be established which requires equal respect for all agents. By creating this necessary connection, it is possible to move beyond an anthropocentric conception of legal normativity to one that necessarily must instead respect the basic rights possessed by all agents – regardless of species. Legal rights for animals that are capable of acting within Gewirth's conception of agency must therefore be seen not to be a mere aspiration for a well-meaning society, but a logical necessity within any legal system.