More Equal Than Others

Abstract Unprecedented demands have recently arrived at the doorstep of courts and parliaments the world over: that nonhuman animals should receive some of the rights that have so far been reserved to human beings. This development has raised fundamental questions about the nature of legal rights and who should have them. One of the key questions, which this book addresses, is whether conferring fundamental legal rights to animals would undermine the equal status and rights of humans. The book explains that, while failing to extend legal rights to animals withholds entitlements from them that they deserve based on their capacities, granting animals rights based on capacities threatens to undermine the status and rights of humans lacking these capacities. The book proposes an unorthodox but practical solution to this conundrum: the Species Membership Approach (SMA). According to the SMA, legal rights and similar entitlements should be granted to animals based on the species to which they belong, not their individual capacities. The book develops this proposal by shedding light on the forgotten history of animal and human rights in the French Enlightenment, examining the antithetical nature of the human rights and animal rights conceptions that have since dominated the debate, and demonstrating how a middle ground can be reached between these opposing conceptions.