What is the best way to use the law to protect animals? The current approach, at least in the United Kingdom, is not to give rights to animals, but to impose obligations on human beings dealing with animals. But should the approach be the other way round, with the law providing instead that animals have rights themselves? And would that make any difference?
One potential objection to a shift to a rights-based approach is that animals cannot have rights because they cannot them - selves enforce these rights. A pig cannot be a plaintiff in person, and an ape cannot be an applicant in a court. But this response is misconceived. There are many situations where a person has legal rights that are enforced on their behalf. Think of minors and the incapacitated. Even abstract entities have rights that can be enforced. Corporations are treated at law as “legal persons,” with almost all the rights that a human being can have.