Of linchpins and bedrock: Hope, despair, and pragmatism in animal law

Abstract:The field of animal law is ubiquitously characterized as being split between proponents of ‘animal rights’ and ‘animal welfare.’ While rights advocates seek to end the legal classification of animals as ‘property’ (or pursue the related goal of establishing animals as legal ‘persons’), welfarists aim to improve animal lives within the property paradigm. The common wisdom that all legal approaches to animals are fundamentally split between rights and welfarism has worked to ossify categories of analysis and prevent more accurate and productive accounts of what truly divides and unites theorists within this increasingly diverse field. In place of this traditional assumption that one must be simply ‘for’ or ‘against’ the abolition of property status, I propose an alternative pair of axes around which we might more productively organize existing and future approaches to animal law. First, what do these various approaches take to be the linchpin of animals’ exploitation – the thing that, though central to the system, is changeable, such that, if changed, the whole system might change with it? Second, what do these approaches take to constitute the unchangeable bedrock of existing systems of animal exploitation – things that reform efforts must take as inevitable, for better or for worse? Changing our lens to focus on bedrock and linchpins invites more nuanced debate respecting the unique constellations of hope, despair, and pragmatism that in fact animate so much animal law scholarship. In a field characterized by transformative ambitions, the proposed analysis of linchpins and bedrock focuses our attention on differing accounts of change – what must change and what cannot.