The Next Rights Revolution?

‘FUR is murder!” is a slogan you didn’t hear very much until recently. In part, it is because the world used to face other forms of outrage, in which human beings lost their lives because of their religious beliefs or, closer to home, were kept out of public places because of their skin color. Against this grim background, the advocates of civil rights and civil liberties had a proper mission: to ensure that all human beings enjoy the full and equal protection of the laws.

Now come the animal-rights advocates, who ask the following provocative question: Has the civil-rights revolution gone far enough by attacking invidious distinctions based on race, color, or religious beliefs? Or should it be regarded as backward and incomplete because it fails to recognize legal rights in (nonhuman) animals? Is discrimination against animals, as many animal-rights advocates repeatedly insist, like discrimination against blacks? That the law was so wrong, for so long, on the scope of its protection in the prior case raises challenges that we cannot ignore in the second. In what way, exactly, is the law justified in preferring the status of human beings to that of lower animals?

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.

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‘FUR is murder!” is a slogan you didn’t hear very much until recently. In part, it is because the world used to face other forms of outrage, in which human beings lost their lives because of their religious beliefs or, closer to home, were kept out of public places because of their skin color. Against this grim background, the advocates of civil rights and civil liberties had a proper mission: to ensure that all human beings enjoy the full and equal protection of the laws.

Now come the animal-rights advocates, who ask the following provocative question: Has the civil-rights revolution gone far enough by attacking invidious distinctions based on race, color, or religious beliefs? Or should it be regarded as backward and incomplete because it fails to recognize legal rights in (nonhuman) animals? Is discrimination against animals, as many animal-rights advocates repeatedly insist, like discrimination against blacks? That the law was so wrong, for so long, on the scope of its protection in the prior case raises challenges that we cannot ignore in the second. In what way, exactly, is the law justified in preferring the status of human beings to that of lower animals?

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.