How will activists get the paradigm shifted in law for animal rights, Lee?
Lee Hall: First, what do we mean when we say animal rights? Can we explain the term in a way that most anyone could understand? This, perhaps, should be our first mission. There’s a little section in Capers called “the handy pull-out guide to animal rights.” The point there isn’t to be glib, but to say: Rather than allow conventional legal thinking to shape our idea of what animal rights is or isn’t, we can express the positive essence of an idea and our commitment to it. Rights as we’ve known them come with an inherent dilemma: As you’re suggesting, Claudette, the institutions we call upon to formally extend them — courts and other legal authorities — are the same ones that have systematically denied them. And another thing. Rights theory is based on fairness, on treating similar cases in similar ways, and therefore animals who are perceived as most similar to current living persons under the law would get through the court’s door first. Even if apes are declared legal persons, othe
