AT: “Rights Talk Bad – No Trivialization”

AT: “Rights Talk Bad – No Trivialization”

Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 49-50

While there is reason to suspect that boundless expansion trivializes existing rights, two questions remain. Does the animal rights movement demonstrate that rights can be extended to animals without diminishing rights of content, meaning, and power? And, if so, how far can rights be extended before they lose their meaning? In addressing the first question, I shall argue that both the philosophical and political activism of the animal rights movement illustrates a powerful extension of rights. Indeed, I shall suggest that it is the very extension of rights to animals that advances the strength of rights language. Rather than trivializing the language, the expanding scope of rights, and it does so through a reconstruction of the meaning of rights. As for the second question, I will offer some speculations suggesting that if rights are to be extended to nonsentient, nonliving beings a significantly transformed understanding of rights would have to be advanced. More likely, increasing respect and protection for nonsentient beings would be better advanced by an alternative to rights language.
RIGHTS DISCOURSE FOR ANIMALS EXPANDS MEANING OF RIGHTS FOR HUMANS

Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 51

Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 51-2

Although stretching rights to animals initially fosters claims of absurdity that may undermine the power of the language, upon more careful inspection, the stretch is hardly absurd. Most of the absurdity claims arise from superficial responses such as “animal rights means pigs in school, driving cars, and voting” and animal rights activists hate humans and love animals.” These types of allegations can be easily dismissed in such a way as to reinvigorate rights with power. All animal rights philosophers and proponents agree that granting rights to animals does not imply granting animals the same rights that humans hold, just as proponents of human rights agree, for instance, that the rights of children can be restricted. In addition, the allegation that animal advocates hate humans is largely exaggerated. In fact, philosophical and movement literature concerning animal interests frequently reaffirms human rights.

AT: “Rights Talk Bad – No Trivialization”

Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 50

If these view is accepted, then the slippery slope argument must be rejected. To deny rights to animals simply because extending rights might lead to problems further down the slope is not persuasive. Indeed, applying the slippery slope argument to deny the extension of rights to animals fosters an arbitrary demarcation at the level of species. The danger of such a capricious demarcation is clear when we consider that the same line can be drawn further up the slope, as it has in the past, within the human species. The slippery slope argument thus is not unique to animal rights. It was the kind of argument expressed by many who wished to deny rights to blacks, women, and other marginalized groups. If we agree that the slippery slope argument does not justify denial of human rights, we similarly have to agree that it does not, in itself, warrant denial of animal rights.

AT: “Rights Talk Bad” – Rights Talk Good for Animals

Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 88-89

In invoking human rights and connecting them to animals, advocates resort to an authoritative language. To be sure, such a resort does not guarantee acceptance of animal rights. Yet, from the perspective of the marginalized, right language is a powerful tool because it provides a means of entering popular discourse. It gives a voice to the silenced and a language with which to articulate demands for change. The language is particularly useful due to its recognition and common usage throughout society. Activists, aware of the ubiquity of rights, appropriate the language in an implicit attempt to “turn society’s ‘institutional logic’ against itself.”
RIGHTS TALK IS A POWERFUL TOOL TO PROMOTE THE INTERESTS OF MARGINALIZED GROUPS

Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996

Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 88

Along with its familiarity, rights language is a powerful medium for a variety of reasons. First, rights language is persuasive talk that provides a solid normative foundation from which to wage social struggles. The search for normative grounding is a method rooted in our society, and the ‘persistence of rights talk implies an aspiration to base moral arguments on the basis of reason.” Rights talk is therefore significant not only due to its acceptance and common usage but because its very usage provides ‘invigorating words with the power to explain.” Second, rights talk generates discussion, debate, and education, thereby rousing thought and dialogue. The very battles and disagreements prompted by rights talk can be beneficial because they promote analysis and dialogue. And third, rights may contribute to a sense of self-worth and definition for movement activists. As Elizabeth Schneider concludes in her study of the women’s movement, rights can enhance self-worth and empowerment: “The articulation of women’s rights provides a sense of self and distinction for individual women…Claims of equal rights and reproductive choice, for example, empowered women.”
RIGHTS TALK EFFECTIVE FOR ANIMALS—NOT UTOPIAN

FRANCIONE, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996

Rain Without Thunder, p. 4

I argue that rights theory provides more concrete normative guidance for incremental change than other views relied on by animal advocates. That is, animal rights theory is not “utopian”; it contains a nascent blueprint for the incremental eradication of the property status of animals. The incremental eradication of animal suffering prescribed by classical welfarism—cannot and will not, in itself, lead to the abolition of institutionalized exploitation; what is needed is the incremental eradication of the property status of animals.
RIGHTS DISCOURSE UNIQUELY VALUABLE FOR PROTECTING ANIMAL INTERESTS

Bernard E. Rollin, professor of philosophy, Colorado State University, 1994

The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 216-7

Elsewhere, I stressed the close connection between law and morality. As long as animals were legally property, whose treatment was qualified only by vacuous prohibitions against deliberate “cruelty”, virtually all animal suffering at human hands could be countenanced by the social ethic. For this reason, talk of rights is of paramount importance, for rights, as we have seen, serve a legal as well as a moral function. Ultimately, the rights of animals, protecting fundamental aspects of their telos, must be “writ large” in the legal system, if their systematic violation is to end. As we have indicated, this notion informs the emerging ethic for animals.