Cutting out the middleperson: An interests-based account of animals' legal inclusion

Abstract

What are the key structural barriers that are preventing animals from gaining access to greater legal protection and, thus, greater justice? Animals are protected under welfare and anti-cruelty laws around the world and can even, under an interest theory account of rights, be said to have legal rights. Nevertheless, animals' legal inclusion remains severely limited in a range of ways: welfare laws protect economically and socially valuable practices that cause immense suffering to animals, the laws are poorly enforced by regulatory bodies, and animals have virtually no recourse to civil law remedies. This thesis focuses on the last of these problems, as one that has so far been under-researched in political theory. One solution that has been proposed is to have (at least certain) animals recognised as "legal persons", alongside humans and corporations. This proposal, however, is undesirable in that legal personhood is an exclusionary concept that is poorly understood, and inconsistently applied, within the legal system. This thesis instead suggests that the legal system recognise a new model of inclusion that is flexible enough to encompass the interests of humans, animals, and non-animal entities. The interest principle of legal inclusion holds that no entity with judicable interests is to be excluded from seeking justice through the legal system - especially not on the basis of their species status. This principle, in relying on existing legal tools and concepts that can straightforwardly be applied to all interest-bearing entities, provides a firmer path forward for animals' legal inclusion than does that of legal personhood.