Giving animals a leg to stand on: Why sentient animals should have legal standing

Abstract

After years of incremental improvements in animal welfare laws, a growing number of animal advocates has been requesting legal standing for animals in lawsuits to protect their rights. This entails that animals would be recognized as a plaintiff in court (represented by a human person) and could allege a defendant for causing harm to them. The central question in this thesis is: ‘From an ethical point of view, should sentient animals be eligible for legal standing?’. This includes both the question whether animals should be regarded as legal persons, and whether they should have the right to sue. I argue that the answer to both questions should be affirmative, for three reasons. First, animals can have some degree of moral personhood and therefore should be eligible for a passive form of legal personhood. Second, attributing legal personhood to animals enables us to increase our own moral personhood. Third, animals should have legal standing because this allows us to fulfil our duties towards animals who are co-citizens or denizens in our political community and animals who are citizens of their own sovereign communities.