This article by Mari Margil appeared on the Oxford Human Rights Hub, August 13th, 2018.
In the United States, the Fourth of July is celebrated as Independence Day. Someday history books may celebrate the Fourth of July 2018 as a new “independence day” – not for a new nation, but for a new kingdom. On that day, the High Court of Uttarakhand at Naintal, in northern India, issued a decision declaring legal rights of the “entire animal kingdom.” The High Court wrote, “Every species has an inherent right to live and are required to be protected by law.” This is a level of freedom and independence that animals have not had since the early days of human civilization.
In the case before the High Court, the court was asked to consider the legality of the poor treatment of horses used in transport. The High Court concluded that species “cannot be treated merely as property” existing for human use.
Today, legal systems around the world treat animals as property, without legal rights. Animal protection laws are aimed at regulating how humankind may use that property.
For instance, in the U.S., the Animal Welfare Act was adopted by Congress under the authority of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Within the Act, Congress explains the need to regulate “the transportation, purchase, sale, housing, care, handling, and treatment of animals by carriers or by persons or organizations engaged in using them for research or experimental purposes or for exhibition purposes or holding them for sale as pets or for any such purpose or use.” Inherent within the law is that animals are items of property or commerce.
How the law treats animals is not unlike how wide swaths of the human population have been treated throughout history – as property, without even basic legal rights to exist or well-being. MORE…