page_title: Animal rights
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Animal rights / Philosophical and legal approaches / Overview
caption_attribution_description: Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago
context_page_description: Animal rights is the idea in which some, or all, animals are entitled to the possession of their own existence and that their most basic interests—such as the need to avoid suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. That is, some species of animals have the right to be treated as the individuals they are, with their own desires and needs, rather than as an unfeeling property.
  Its advocates oppose the assignment of moral value and fundamental protections on the basis of species membership alone—an idea known since 1970 as speciesism, when the term was coined by Richard D. Ryder—arguing that it is a prejudice as irrational as any other. They maintain that animals should no longer be viewed as property or used as food, clothing, research subjects, entertainment, or beasts of burden. Multiple cultural traditions around the world such as Jainism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and Animism also espouse some forms of animal rights.
  In parallel to the debate about moral rights, animal law is now widely taught in law schools in North America, and several legal scholars, such as Steven M. Wise and Gary L.
context_section_description: The two main philosophical approaches to animal rights are utilitarian and rights-based. The former is exemplified by Peter Singer, and the latter by Tom Regan and Gary Francione. Their differences reflect a distinction philosophers draw between ethical theories that judge the rightness of an act by its consequences (consequentialism/teleological ethics, or utilitarianism), and those that focus on the principle behind the act, almost regardless of consequences (deontological ethics). Deontologists argue that there are acts we should never perform, even if failing to do so entails a worse outcome.
  There are a number of positions that can be defended from a consequentalist or deontologist perspective, including the capabilities approach, represented by Martha Nussbaum, and the egalitarian approach, which has been examined by Ingmar Persson and Peter Vallentyne. The capabilities approach focuses on what individuals require to fulfill their capabilities: Nussbaum (2006) argues that animals need a right to life, some control over their environment, company, play, and physical health.
  Stephen R. L. Clark, Mary Midgley, and Bernard Rollin also discuss animal rights in terms of animals being permitted to lead a life appropriate for their kind. Egalitarianism favors an equal distribution of happiness among all individuals, which makes the interests of the worse off more important than those of the better off. Another approach, virtue ethics, holds that in considering how to act we should consider the character of the actor, and what kind of moral agents we should be. Rosalind Hursthouse has suggested an approach to animal rights based on virtue ethics. Mark Rowlands has proposed a contractarian approach.
caption: Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, is a proponent of the capabilities approach to animal rights.
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