Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2025
The concluding chapter reiterates the goal of the book: to offer a solution to animals’ lack of legal inclusion by offering a new foundation of legal subjectivity. The Principle of Multispecies Legality provides such a foundation for animals and, indeed, all those beings and entities with interests. By contrast with the present paradigm of legal personhood, the PML is not premised on a vision of the ‘archetypal’ human which serves to exclude not only animals but also many vulnerable human groups. The PML is also an improvement over the rights of nature, in that it more straightforwardly recognises the interests and worth of individual animals and does not maintain the ontological barrier between humans and all other nature. Finally, we are reminded that making change takes a multispecies village: that the PML is only as good as those who are willing to implement it. In order to ensure real change for animals and other interested beings, we need to work to encourage greater respect for the non-human world.
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