Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Should Reject Property Status of Animals
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Should Reject Property Status of AnimalsANIMAL WELFARE APPROACHES DOOMED TO FAIL – UNEQUAL STATUS BETWEEN HUMANS AND NONHUMANS MEANS HUMAN INTERESTS ALWAYS WIN Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 47 Animal welfare provides that we ought to balance human and animal interests in situations when human/animal conflict, and that we ought to avoid imposing “unnecessary” suffering on animals. The problem is that when we balance these interests in order to see whether the suffering or death of an animals is “necessary”, we actually balance two very different normative entities. Human beings are regarded by the law as having interests that are protected by rights. To the extent that the law recognizes that nonhumans have interests, those interests are virtually never protected by right and can always be sacrificed if the benefit to humans (however measured) justify the sacrifice. This lopsided approach is exacerbated when the property rights of humans Are involved because animals are a form of property. As such, humans are entitled under the law to convey or sell their animals, consume or kill them, use them as collateral, obtain the offspring and natural dividends from animals, and exclude others from interfering in the owner’s dominion and control. Indeed, to characterize animals as property is precisely to regard them solely as means to human ends, and without any inherent value recognized under the law. ANIMAL RIGHTS NOT POSSIBLE AS LONG AS THEY ARE REGARDED AS PROPERTY Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 54 If animals are property, and property status is inconsistent with the existence of basic rights, such as the right of physical security, then the achievement of animal rights may well be impossible as long as animals are regarded as property. That is, if animals are to have any rights at all (other than merely legalistic or abstract ones), they must have certain basic rights that would then necessarily protect them from being used as food or clothing sources, or as experimental animals. If animal rights requires at a minimum the recognition of basic rights as Shue understands them, then animal rights may very well be an all-or-nothing state of affairs. NO CHANCE OF SUCCESSFUL REFORM THROUGH THE POLITICAL SYSTEM WITHOUT FIRST REJECTING THE PROPERTY STATUS OF ANIMALS” Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996, Rain Without Thunder, p. 170-1 As long as animals are property, insider status is almost always what Garner refers to as “phoney.” The best that the moderate insider will be able to do in the overwhelming number of cases is to ascertain what level of property regulation will be agreed to by property owners as acceptable, and not much more. Garner is correct to say that only those who articulate “moderate and realistic aims pursued in a conciliatory and calm fashion” will achieve insider status, but that status in this context means only that its possessors will have the ability to promote those changes that are going to be acceptable to the unified opposition of property owners, whose interests are protected conscientiously by the government in any case. It should, then, come as no surprise that “radicals” do not see this arrangement as even potentially promising and so stop supporting it. To call such unwillingness to participate “divisive” or to argue for the desirability of unity under these circumstances is to make an argument in favor of unity, but merely to restate support for welfarist reform in opposition to the rights approach.
Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996, Rain Without Thunder, p. 162 To suggest that any animal rights advocate is maintaining that we can achieve “total victory” in “one move” is simply ridiculous. If an advocate of animal rights is going to advocate on behalf of legal or social change on the macro level at all, the rights advocate has no choice but to support some sort of social change. And on at least two levels, rights theory prescribes a very definite theory of incremental change. First, by requiring that individuals eschew animal products in their own lives (as a matter of the micro component of moral theory), rights theory implicitly contains a prescription for achieving the ideal state through the incremental means of more and more people who do not participate directly in institutionalized animal exploitation as a political matter. Non-violent civil disobedience may also be used to protect individual animals, which is also consistent with rights theory. Boycotts of products and companies directed at the eradication of institutionalized exploitation can also be regarded as incremental change that is totally consistent with rights theory. In sum, advocating on behalf of complete and immediate abolition is itself incremental and completely consistent with rights. INCREMENTALISM IS THE ONLY POLITICALLY SUSTAINABLE WAY TO EXTEND ANIMAL RIGHTS David Favre, Professor of Law, Michigan State University, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 236 It is a burden of the animal rights movement that so many of its leaders will support only the purest philosophical position, regardless of political feasibility. It must be realized by all that there is a key difference between personal philosophy and political reality. Many assume that the full legal implementation of their vegan philosophy is the immediate and only appropriate goal of legal change. And yet, such radical change in the short term is impossible in our legal system. It would be more realistic to be incremental, to begin the journey of change by modifying, but not eliminating, the existence of the property status of animals. LEGAL CHANGES –AS REGARDED NEW CONCEPTIONS OF PROPERTY STATUS—MUST OCCUR INCREMENTAL David Favre, Professor of Law, Michigan State University, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 239 Some continuation of the property status will be essential in the new animal paradigm, not only for the animals, but for the judges or lawmakers who take the next step on behalf of animals. Change in the legal system, because of its conservative structure, normally happens incrementally. Judges do not like to be put into positions where the consequences of their actions, by judgments, are not knowable in advance, and acceptable to them. If the next step for animal jurisprudence continues to be spoken in terms of traditional property concepts, then the judges and lawmakers will be more comfortable in pushing the process along.
Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 51 The flip side of the myth that animal welfare works is the myth that rights for animals is an unrealistic and unachievable alternative. Just as the efficacy of animal welfare has been challenged, so too will the supposed inefficacy of animals rights.
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