Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Species Barrier Blocks Recognition of Animal Rights Now
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- Characterization of Animals as “Property” Blocks Recognition of Rights
Species Barrier Blocks Recognition of Animal Rights NowANIMAL INTERESTS CAN NEVER PREVAIL IN A FRAMEWORK THAT SAYS ONLY HUMANS HAVE RIGHTS Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 249-50 There is however, general consensus that animals ought not to be subjected to “unnecessary” pain or “unjustified” killing. Although animals are viewed as property that cannot possess rights, there are many laws that purport to provide some level of protection for animals in a variety of different circumstances. The problem is that when humans try to determine whether suffering or death is “necessary”, they inevitably engage in “hybrid” reasoning in which they balance human interests, including the legal fact that humans are regarded as having rights, and especially rights in property, and animal interests, which are unsupported by accompanying claims of right. And nonhumans are a form of property that humans seek to control. Under this framework, animals can virtually never prevail as long as humans are the only rightholders and animals are merely regarded as property—the object of the exercise of an important human right.
Kim Stallwood, PETA, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 195 The dominant culture’s attitude toward animals also is similar to the attitude toward women described in Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1983). Nonhuman animals are the “Other.” They are other than humans, nonhuman, things, no-things, or simply nothing. Nonhuman animals are thoroughly objectified—even down to the way they commonly are referred to in the abstract as “it” rather than “he” or “she.” They are reduced to the status of the economic units of production, sources or entertainment or adornment, or objects to be manipulated for human ends. PERSONHOOD IS A WALL THAT SEPARATES THOSE WITH RIGHTS FROM THOSE WITHOUT RIGHTS Steven M. Wise, animal rights attorney and law professor, 2003, The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Armstrong & Botzler, p. 539 Not until the nineteenth century was slavery abolished in the West and every human formally cloaked with the legal personhood that signifies eligibility for fundamental legal rights. So the final brick of a great legal wall, begun millennia ago, was cemented into place. Today, on one side of this legal wall reside all the natural legal persons, all the members of a single species, Homo sapiens. We have assigned ourselves, alone among the millions of animals species, the exalted status of legal persons, entitled to all the rights, privileges, powers and immunities of “legal personhood” (Wise, 1996).
Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 249 The reason for the differential treatment accorded to nonhumans has to do with the fact that as far as the legal system is concerned, animals and humans occupy completely different positions. Human beings are regarded by the law as capable of having rights; nonhumans are regarding as incapable of having rights. Although there is an increasing social awareness about nonhuman animals and a consensus that animals possess at least some moral rights that ought to be recognized by the legal system, animals still have the status of being the property of human beings—just as slaves were once regarded as the property of their master, or women as the property of their husbands or fathers.
Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 250 The animal interest, even when it is substantial from the animal’s point of view, is virtually always accorded less weight than the most trivial of human interests because, for the most part, human beings have absolutely no way of looking at nonhumans except as some form of property. Most human/animal conflicts arise because some human is trying to exercise his or her rights of property over some nonhuman, and the conflict ostensibly requires that we balance the human and animal interests. In doing so, however, we are comparing the interests of humans, which are supported by claims of legal right, and especially the legal right to exercise control over property, with the interests of nonhumans, which are unsupported by claims of legal right because the animal is regarded as the property of the human whose interest is at stake. This balancing of completely dissimilar but peculiarly related legal entities accounts for why animals virtually always lose in the balance. For example, we condemn the “unnecessary” suffering of animals, but we tolerate the use (which is synonymous with “the abuse”) of chimpanzees in circuses. There is no way that the use of chimpanzees in circuses can be squared with our rejection of “unnecessary” animal suffering, without understanding that such animal abuse is made “necessary” merely by the existence of the right of property in the chimpanzee—and in Western societies, that property right is seen as a very powerful right. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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