Animal rights, legal personhood and cognitive capacity: addressing ‘levelling-down’ concerns

IF 3 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Journal of Human Rights and the Environment Pub Date : 2020-09-01 DOI:10.4337/jhre.2020.02.03
J. Wills
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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.
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动物权利、法人资格和认知能力:解决“平抑”问题
本文考虑了对美国非人权项目(NhRP)当前诉讼策略的反对意见,该项目寻求将法律人格和自由权利扩展到拥有“实际自主权”的非人类动物。反对意见认为,通过将人格与智力能力捆绑在一起,这种策略危及具有严重认知障碍的人类目前的法律地位。本文将论证,出于两个原因,这种担忧在很大程度上是错位的。首先,NhRP认为实际自治只是人格的充分条件,而不是必要条件。其次,根据理论和实证文献,本文将论证物种主义本身是压迫性理论、态度、信仰和实践的乘数,这些理论、态度、信仰和实践对边缘人类(包括有认知障碍的人类)产生了负面影响。因此,NhRP在法律领域减少物种歧视的尝试被假设为解决对边缘人类歧视的一部分,而不是问题的一部分。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
2.90
自引率
0.00%
发文量
6
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.
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