Animals and human rights

This article argues that human rights theory faces pressure from scholarship on animals. Because grounding human rights in bare species membership seems implausible, most theories ground such rights in species neutral criteria. These criteria may be naturalistic (based on sentience or autonomy, for example) or functionalist (based on the socio-political role of rights). Standard theories of human rights have not adequately addressed that many animals appear to meet these criteria, as we show that they do across a range of arguments. However, consistency demands that if a being meets the criteria a theory stipulates for the possession of human rights, they should be recognised as possessing such rights. This leaves human rights theory with three options: it must either explain why these criteria are not met by animals after all, offer alternate criteria—or recognise many animals as bearers of ‘human’ rights.