Chapter 3 covers the period from 1962 to 1968, as it argues how in those years a subtle, but lasting shift took place in Dutch society and government with regards to the Convention.

First, the chapter sets out how the emergence of a new memory culture and the so-called ‘depillarization’ of society opened a window of opportunity emerged for a new kind of activism, which increasingly turned to the language of human rights. This new activism intersected with decolonization, and its impact on governmental policy. Moreover, as Suriname and the Antilles became part of the active protection of human rights, the Convention was turned from a document built to preserve conservative European ideals into a document based on the need to protect individual human rights claims.

Second, this chapter argues that the crucial catalyst in this development was the interstate complaint procedure of 1967 against Greece. Brought forth by the new kind of activism which had emerged in these years, the complaint not only forced the Dutch government to make a distinct choice as to what the Convention entailed, but also served as ‘boomerang’ to galvanize human rights activism as such.

This chapter explores one of the key facets of animals’ lack of legal inclusion in the context of civil law: their lack of legal standing. That animals are unable to take legal actions to seek redress for the wrongs done to them is particularly salient given – as the previous chapter demonstrated through the discussion of animal welfare laws – animals’ only other avenue for seeking legal justice is severely limited. This chapter explores the issue of animal standing by comparing various court cases that have involved animal plaintiffs, including the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s case on behalf of Justice the horse, and PETA’s cases on behalf of Naruto the macaque and orcas held captive in a Sea World. These cases have hinged on whether these animals – and indeed, non-human animals in general – can be regarded as having the legal and cognitive capacities that tend to be associated with legal subjecthood. With the courts in these cases finding that animals lack these capacities, the issue of standing exemplifies the broader problem that animals face in the legal system: they are rendered more-or-less invisible to the legal system because they lack the right legal status.

This chapter outlines how the Principle of Multispecies Legality offers solutions to the barriers to legal inclusion facing animals in both criminal and civil law contexts: by enabling animals to take legal action; by ensuring that, in civil suits, harms to animals are taken seriously and benefits are awarded to the animals themselves; and that defences of ‘necessity’ in animal welfare laws only apply when the otherwise harmful action is taken for the ultimate benefit of the animal him- or herself. The chapter then explores four institutional safeguards needed to ensure the PML is effective: that legislation is developed under the principle of anticipatory accommodation; that there is the establishment of independent offices of animal welfare; that there is the establishment of dedicated animal crime units and public prosecutors; and that there is equal access to legal services to ensure that all humans who seek to assist animals in taking legal action can do so, regardless of their financial circumstances. Finally, the chapter considers how we need to learn to recognise more expansive conceptions of (political) communication and learn how to be more receptive to them.

This chapter considers how, with animals recognised as a part of nature, legally enshrined ‘rights of nature’ could provide a basis for animals’ legal subjecthood. The chapter centres on the case of Estrellita, an Ecuadorean woolly monkey who was declared to be a subject of rights under Ecuador’s constitutionally enshrined rights of ‘pachamama’ or ‘Mother Earth’. Yet, while Estrellita’s case highlights the potential for rights of nature to serve as a source of animals’ legal subjectivity, the chapter stresses caution. First, several rights-of-nature provisions have arguably co-opted Indigenous ideas, and served to justify continued resource extraction under the guise of living in balance with nature. Second, rights-of-nature provisions maintain the ontological human/all-other-nature divide that exists in current legal systems. Finally, the rights of nature may operate as a kind of ‘eco-coverture’ by encapsulating the interests of individual animals within the sphere of nature’s interests, thereby limiting the potential scope of animals’ legal protection. The chapter concludes that we can do better than grounding animals’ legal subjecthood in the rights of nature.

This chapter presents an alternative to legal personhood and the rights of nature as the means to better include animals within the scope of legal justice. It offers the Principle of Multispecies Legality as not merely an account of animals’ legal subjectivity but of the legal subjectivity of all those beings and entities that have – or that we might, as a democratic society, choose to recognise as having – interests. The PML holds that interests-bearing entitles one to recognition as a subject of the law, with the capacity to take legal action and have one’s interests considered impartially. In rejecting sentience as the grounds of animals’ politico-legal inclusion, the PML’s account of legal subjectivity provides for animals alongside existing sentient and non-sentient legal subjects, like humans and corporations. It also leaves the door open for other valuable entities that currently lack legal subjecthood, such as plants, fungi, bodies of water, and ecosystems. The chapter argues that the inclusivity of the PML is beneficial not only for animals and other non-human entities but also for those humans whose legal subjectivity remains tenuous under existing personhood paradigms.

This chapter seeks to strengthen the account of the Principle of Multispecies Legality offered in the previous chapter by responding to potential queries and concerns around the proposal’s structure, scope, and feasibility. The outlined concerns are as follows: that the PML is an attempt to redefine legal personhood; that a focus on interests is too inclusive, in that in opening the doors of legal inclusion to a relatively wide range of beings and entities it would put undesirable constraints on human activity; that a focus on interests is too limited in that it doesn’t capture the full scope of animals’ capabilities; that the PML will result in the equal treatment of humans and all other animals; that we shouldn’t base a being’s worth on their possession of a particular characteristic; and that the PML will be too unfeasible to implement.

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.

This chapter introduces several examples from the Australian state of New South Wales that highlight the various institutional barriers in the way of legal redress that currently face animals who are subject to cruel treatment. These examples highlight how apparent animal abuse often goes un-investigated and unprosecuted, and how those who seek to help abused or neglected animals may themselves be threatened with legal penalties. The chapter then addresses the question of why, from the perspective of political justice, we should care about this state of affairs and why, therefore, we might be obligated to seek institutional reform on behalf of the other animals that form a part of our multispecies community. We are, finally, introduced to the book’s proposed Principle of Multispecies Legality, which aims to provide a foundation for the legal subjectivity of animals and all those beings and entities that have interests.

This chapter aims to provide conceptual clarity on animals’ current legal status by addressing the long-debated question of whether they can have legal rights. By taking a legal positivist approach to legal rights, I suggest that there are no conceptual barriers to animal legal rights – whether we draw on the interest or the will theory of rights. Furthermore, by considering an example of animal welfare legislation that recognises the ‘intrinsic value’ of animals, we see evidence that certain animals already have legal rights. Nevertheless, even the strongest animal welfare laws are replete with exemptions that protect the interests of human individuals and industries that subject animals to poor levels of welfare or outright cruelty. As such, the legal rights that animals do have are weak. Finally, the chapter addresses three counters to the claim that animals have legal rights: welfare, enforcement, and personhood objections. With none of these objections posing a fatal challenge to animals’ legal rights, we can move on to the next chapter to consider what, precisely, is in the way of animals’ greater legal inclusion if not their rightlessness per se.

Legal personhood is the status accorded those, like humans, who are recognised as the subjects of the legal system. As such, many argue that we can address animals’ weak legal position by having them recognised as legal persons. This chapter first considers what legal personhood is and highlights how this concept has been heavily influenced by metaphysical accounts of personhood that privilege characteristics associated with the ‘archetypal’ human. Through a discussion of cases involving animal plaintiffs, the chapter shows how a range of different – and, at times, conflicting – conceptions of personhood have influenced the courts’ understanding of legal personhood. In addition to the judicial inconsistency that legal personhood seems to invite, we see evidence of how particular conceptions of personhood have been operationalised to exclude animals (conceptions that also serve to further marginalise vulnerable human groups). This leads the chapter to conclude that legal personhood is not a desirable solution to animals’ lack of legal inclusion. More than this, the chapter argues that a concept like personhood should nor underpin legal subjecthood for any being, human or otherwise.