Sentience Not A Good Standard for Rights

Animal Rights Unnecessary: Can Meet Moral Obligations Without Rights

Donald G. Lindburg, Zoology Society of San Diego, 2003, The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Armstrong & Botzler, p. 472

Laura Ireland Moore, executive director of the National Center for Animal Law, 2005 Animal Law (A REVIEW OF ANIMAL RIGHTS: CURRENT DEBATES AND NEW DIRECTIONS) 2005 (lexis)

27 Posner questions the ability of the animal rights movement to analogize with other civil rights movements, notably of women and minorities. n40 In part, this criticism is based on the ability of civil rights  [*316]  movement leaders to articulate a goal and give a clear answer as to the desired outcome of their struggle, in contrast to the varying strategies and goals of the animal rights movement. n41 Posner believes the best way to protect animals is to forbid gratuitous cruelty. n42
SPECIES MEMBERSHIP IS MORALLY RELEVANT

Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 309-10

We should admit that there is much to be learned from reflection on the continuum of life. Capacities do crisscross and overlap; a chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child or an older autistic child. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A mentally disabled child is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child’s life is tragic in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not tragic; She is cut off from forms of flourishing that, but for the disability, she might have had, disabilities that it is the job of science to prevent or cure, whenever that is possible. There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Her social and political functioning is threatened by these disabilities, in a way that the normal functioning of a chimpanzee in the community of chimpanzees is not threatened by its cognitive endowment.

Should Protect Animal Interests Without Granting Animal Rights

Richard A. Epstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 148

The historical backdrop invites a further inquiry: Why is it that anyone assumes the human ownership of animals necessarily leads to their suffering, let alone their destruction? Often, quite the opposite is true. Animals that are left to their own devices have no masters; nor do the have any peace. Life in the wild leaves them exposed to the elements, to attacks by other animals, to the inability to find food or shelter, to accidental injury, and to disease. The expected life of animals in the wild need not be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. But it is often rugged, and rarely placid and untroubled.

Human ownership changes this natural state of animals for the better as well as for the worse. Because they use and value animals, owners will spend resources for their protection. Veterinary medicine may not be at the level of human medicine, but it is only a generation or so behind. When it comes to medical care, it’s better to be a sick cat in a middle-class US household than a sick peasant in a Third World country. Private ownership of many pets (or, if one must, “companions”) gives them access to food and shelter (and sometimes clothing) which creates long lives of ease and comfort. Even death can be done in more humane ways than in nature, for any slaughter that spares cattle, for example, unnecessary anxiety, tends to improve the amount and quality of the meat that is left behind. No one should claim a perfect concurrence between the interests of humans and animals: Ownership is not tantamount to partnership. But by the same token, there is no necessary conflict between owners and their animals. Over b road areas of human endeavor, the ownership of animals has worked to their advantage, and not to their detriment.
“PERSONHOOD” STATUS NOT NECESSARY TO PROTECT ANIMAL INTERESTS

Cass Sunstein, Law Professor, University of Chicago, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 11

There is, however, an underlying puzzle here. What does it mean to say that animals are property and can be “owned?” As we have seen, animals even if owned, cannot be treated however the owner wishes; the law forbids cruelty and neglect. Ownership is just a label, connoting a certain set of rights and perhaps duties, and without a lot more, we cannot identity those rights and duties. A state could dramatically increase enforcement of existing bans on cruelty and neglect without turning animals into persons, or making them into something other than property. A state could do a great deal to prevent animal suffering, indeed carry out the central goals of the animal welfare program, without saying that animal cannot be owned. We could even grant animals a right to bring suit without insisting that animals are persons, or that they are not property. A state could certainly confer rights on a pristine area, or a painting, and allow people to bring suit on its behalf, without therefore saying that that area and that painting may not be owned.