8th October 2021
Once I did not think animals should have rights.
To the extent I had any view on the subject, my view was that ‘animals don’t have rights, but humans have responsibilities’.
After all: how could an animal have rights if an animal could not enforce them?
But.
The more I thought about it, the more that view just did not add up.
Lots of humans have rights that have to be enforced on their behalf – minors and the incapacitated, for example.
Even things that do not actually exist in physical form have rights and legal personality – corporations for example.
And so the fact that animals could not enforce their own rights was not a reason to deny them rights.
Then, as I looked at animal welfare law in the United Kingdom – a complex sprawling mess of legislation with arbitrary distinctions between species and various levels of protection (and lack of protection), and with varying degrees of enforcement (and lack of enforcement), it seemed to me that it would be far better if the whole thing was replaced with a single Animals Act (like the Children Act).
And if so, then the basis of the legislation should be that all animals have rights – not just the lucky ones.
Not necessarily absolute rights – but then again few human rights are absolute.
But that regard would have to be had to these rights by government and the courts.
And so, with with this change-of-mind, I wrote a column in this month’s Prospect – go and read it here.
Please let me have any comments below – and I will respond when I can.
Your proposal is sensible. If animal rights were to be qualified, how would we decide the principles by which to qualify? Endangered status? biodiversity? sentience? cuteness?…
Well of course animals should have rights. Are we not animals? Why do we think we are Superior to other beings? Is it not us that murders, that plunders the Earth? Is it not us that’s destroying the planet for no other purpose than greed? I have never seen a horse fence itself into a tiny paddock. I have never seen a whale lunch a nuclear missle. Nor have I seen a chimpanzee put on a uniform and a attack a fellow chimpanzee with a tazer.
So yes animals have rights whether we give them or not.
David,
I wholeheartedly support your views. It’s long overdue that we recognize all animals as sentient beings that deserve the consistent and adequate protection of law, especially since we subject domestic and wild animals’ lives and habitats to the decisions and acts of humans. Also agree that all animals, regardless of how photogenic or famous they are or not should benefit from the same fundamental protections.
Legislation of this kind frequently, as you suggest, has a kneejerk and/or sentimental basis. As a result of that (amongst other things), it is frequently badly drafted. One only has to think of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, which has done little, if anything, to solve the problem for which it was enacted.
If one is to accept that animals have rights, one must be able to define what an animal is. That is not as straightforward as it might sound to a politician intent on wooing animal lovers.
And while we’re about it, why should plants not have rights? This is perhaps not as silly a question as it might sound. There is a wonderworld of life which I for one, would find difficult to define as plant or animal; exhibiting as it does some or all expected characteristics of one or the other.
Furthermore, do I have rights as a human per se (and animals by extension), or because they are bestowed upon me by law?
Personally, I think we have far too much legislation. Maybe an enlightened government (oxymoron not intended) might set up an Office for the Simplification of Legislation. Oh for the days when it was possible to be waiting in a Post Office behind someone trying to purchase a dog licence!
Welcome to the club.
You may be interested in reading ‘The Philosopher and the Wolf’ by Mark Rowlands.
And don’t some animals seek to defend their rights when they give you a nip … or defend their young or territory?
Early today I signed this petition
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/668/455/011/please-help-stop-the-death-of-this-innocent-bear/
where people ignored a sign saying to keep dogs on a lead but a free-roaming dog was “attacked” by a bear.
If the dog had been on its lead this bear probably would not be under a death theat. So I fully support your argument that animals should have rights.
I don’t know exactly why people feel the bear must be killed, but I guess it’s because it has attacked people and therefore is likely to be a danger to people in future. If so, that is a reasonable justification.
The petition says “As the higher being of intelligence, we…”. This is dangerous nonsense. we are not higher beings as a result of intelligence – just different. There are repeated references to the bear being “innocent”. This concept does not apply to animals, so it is just emptional manipulation to use it.
And, if the dog was out of control to the extent that it unnecessarily provoked the bear, the fair solution is to kill the dog as well.
Your distinction the other day about rights and freedoms got me thinking about different kinds of rights. Perhaps you have nailed it with your distinction today between rights that have to be enforced by others and rights that are self-enforced. Perhaps it is the former that lie behind the unpopularity of the HRA. The notion of enforcement by others carries political implications about the role of the state. On the other hand those who can exercise rights themselves are generally admired.
As to animal rights, would that mean enforced vegetarianism? If not, would your legislation have to distinguish between edible and inedible animals? Edible and inedible are not the only animal categories though. What about size? How do you legislate for the fact that most people would squash an annoying fly or kill a mouse in a trap, but would not harm a dog or a horse? Are you sure it would be such a good idea to try to tidy up an untidy world by means of legislation?
If humans have legal responsibilities in relation to animals, and those duties can be enforced by third parties, then in a sense animals have rights already: the right to be treated in accordance with the enforceable responsibilities.
But “animals” covers a wide range, from relatively simple things like rotifers and sponges, through worms and arthropods, to more complex things like molluscs and chordates.
Should human interaction with corals and jellyfish and tapeworms, and lice and mosquitos and wasps and moths and crabs, and newts and snakes, and squirrels and rabbits and mice and sparrows, be governed by the same standards that we apply to (say) chimpanzees and dolphins and octopuses?
Consistency is a good thing, but the world is complex, and I’d be wary of the seeming simplicity of a law treating them all the same, because the law will have to make distinctions.
So what would your Animals Act say? Presumably it would go significantly further than the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981?
Perhaps there is a project for the Law Commission here, to bring some regularity to the law in a single coherent code, filling in the gaps and consolidating the existing disparate legislation (which, like much UK law, has developed over time like a mad Lego model, with bits added and other bits taken away, seemingly at random).
I quite agree with you, I would certainly suggest that the law should be regularly ‘tidied up’ so that it is all in one place and of course be coherent.
What about going one step further though and codifying the law, for example all Canadian Criminal Law is in a single Criminal Code which is the definitive text.
As you astutely note, for past legislation “Sentimentality rather than principle has been the usual driver” and that seems to be just as much the case here.
Suppose mammals have rights, and such a right includes one not to be killed in a cruel manner. What do we then do about (wild) mice and the wild carniverous animals which prey on them? Does it mean we must eliminate any animal which does not comply with the proper regulations by stunning its prey before eating it? If not, in what sense do the mice have rights rather than humans having responsibilities? We may ban hunting of foxes with dogs, but if this dervies from foxes’ rights, then surely we must also refrain from implementing rewilding projects which reintroduce any predator that might pursue a fox and kill it – such as wolves.
I personally consider that humans, from fertilisation to adult hood, appropriately have developmental rights: that the rights of the zygote are less than those of the gastrula, which has less rights than the fetus, and so on, to under 16s having less rights than over 16s with regard to sex, and under 18s having less rights than over 18s with regard to alcohol, and so on. We can quibble about the dates, but the principle seems well established in law, and I would particularly wish to support current legislation on termination of pregnancy.
In a somewhat similar way, I also endorse the current legal view that we are under fewer obligations to invertebrates than to vertebrates and so on. I would not wish my decision to spray the roses for greenfly to be viewed in the same way as poisoning a dog.
And of course, the developmental argument would then apply to animals as well. if a mosquito had rights, at what point in its life cycle would the egg acquire those rights? And if the mosquitoes were carrying Plasmodium falciparum, would that make a difference? Or would the plasmodium be protected too? Even if it killed children?
*I’m not clear in my own mind about the relationship between rights and obligations, which is why I’ve put an asterisk against it.
Of course, not being a lawyer I cannot be certain as to the difference between rights and obligations.
However, Charlie, I intimately feel that rights are subjective, hence descend both from our own ethics and perhaps also from law, whilst obligations do not necessarily recognize a subject’s right to enjoy rights but are sets of behaviour imposed by law.
If my cat were to kill a rabbit (which it would do so with considerable cruelty) would the law hold me or the cat responsible? Potentially the end of pet ownership.
If mosquitos have rights the new malaria vaccine would have to be deemed illegal.
What about the bacteria in my gut? If I take antibiotics am I guilty of being their assassin?
I fully accept that the laws on animal rights are a complex mess and in need of simplification. As soon as one starts to consider the process of simplification, the complexity of the problem becomes ever more complex.
Thank you very much for the post.
I would be interested in your opinion about the legal rights versus the moral rights of animals. You might care to read this:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/
Rights are mental constructs created by humans for their own benefit. They cannot be realistically conferred to the other denizens of this world which we inhabit. Creating legislation to this end will be nonsensical, as the Dangerous Dogs Act has demonstrated.
Instead, we need to turn the argument back on ourselves by shouldering our responsibilities as the current dominant life form. We can legislate on matters affecting our relationships with other sentient beings, ideally governed by the principle of ‘do as you would be done by’.
‘Creating legislation to this end will be nonsensical, as the Dangerous Dogs Act has demonstrated.’
The Dangerous Dogs Act did not confer rights on the dangerous dogs.
I’m not sure that the principle of ‘do as you would be done by’ is appropriate here. I am an omnivore, but would not eat other humans. There’s another issue with proposed legislation: how do you define what is sentient? According to my Concise Oxford Dictionary, it means ‘able to perceive or feel things.’ It could potentially be said that most plants are sentient: they sense gravity, growing upwards and roots downwards; they sense light, growing towards the source; they sense water, as roots will curve toward areas of higher moisture; etc. etc. Does a lettuce have rights?
All rights are contingent on circumstances. The most fundamental right must surely be the ‘right to life’. Common law, as I understand it, potentially confers on citizens the right to kill in self-defence. The state confers on itself the right of judicial murder, and the right to kill ‘enemies’ following a declaration of war.
Human beings have evolved as omnivorous out of biological necessity, so that the right to sustain our own lives is pre-eminent. Whether we actually need to enslave, exploit and kill other sentient beings remains an ever more pressing question, especially in view of climate change and the hegemony of an amoral exploitative economic system.
Pursuing ‘rights’ will create more business for lawyers whilst distracting us from our responsibilities to our fellow human beings and other sentient creatures.
While I agree that we need to attempt to tidy up the legislation in care for other animals, I worry about tipping the balance away from humans having responsibilities towards other animals to other animals having what are essentially human contractual rights. It could well lead to intensification of some Animal Rights activists threatening to kill other humans on behalf of other animals. Or to a claim that there is no real difference between humans and other animals. Someone I know said, “If a sparrow wanted to write a poem it would”.