{"title":"Animal rights, legal personhood and cognitive capacity: addressing ‘levelling-down’ concerns","authors":"J. Wills","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.02.03","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article considers objections to current litigation strategies of the US-based Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), which seek to extend legal personhood and liberty rights to nonhuman animals who possess ‘practical autonomy’. By tying personhood to intellectual abilities, so the objections go, such strategies endanger the present legal standing of humans with profound cognitive impairments. This article will argue that such cause for concern is largely misplaced for two reasons. First, the NhRP argue that practical autonomy is only a sufficient condition for personhood, not a necessary one. Second, drawing on theoretical and empirical literature, the article will argue that speciesism itself is a multiplier of oppressive theories, attitudes, beliefs and practices that negatively affect marginalized humans, including humans with cognitive impairments. The NhRP's attempts to reduce speciesism in the legal domain are thus hypothesized as being part of the solution to discrimination against marginalized humans, not as part of the problem.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.02.03","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This article considers objections to current litigation strategies of the US-based Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), which seek to extend legal personhood and liberty rights to nonhuman animals who possess ‘practical autonomy’. By tying personhood to intellectual abilities, so the objections go, such strategies endanger the present legal standing of humans with profound cognitive impairments. This article will argue that such cause for concern is largely misplaced for two reasons. First, the NhRP argue that practical autonomy is only a sufficient condition for personhood, not a necessary one. Second, drawing on theoretical and empirical literature, the article will argue that speciesism itself is a multiplier of oppressive theories, attitudes, beliefs and practices that negatively affect marginalized humans, including humans with cognitive impairments. The NhRP's attempts to reduce speciesism in the legal domain are thus hypothesized as being part of the solution to discrimination against marginalized humans, not as part of the problem.
期刊介绍:
The relationship between human rights and the environment is fascinating, uneasy and increasingly urgent. This international journal provides a strategic academic forum for an extended interdisciplinary and multi-layered conversation that explores emergent possibilities, existing tensions, and multiple implications of entanglements between human and non-human forms of liveliness. We invite critical engagements on these themes, especially as refracted through human rights and environmental law, politics, policy-making and community level activisms.