Overview

• The way we treat other animals on Earth can be, and often is, an egregious failure of our ability to act excellently to the life we share this planet with - this is a moral failure, not necessarily a legal failure.
• Similar to the abortion question, the question of animal rights is to what extent, if at all, animals have a right not to be aggressed against. Another way to think about it is to ask to what extent the concept of personhood applies, and when protection of the Legal Principle is applicable.

Applying the Principles

• Reasonable people may conclude differently about the Legal Principle’s applicability to the intelligent bonobo monkey or chimpanzee versus a worm or even a one-celled non-human living organism. This is a grey area - there is no one correct answer.
• The underlying reason why a person aggresses against a non-human animal, whether for necessary life-saving medical research, life-sustaining food in an extreme emergency, sport in the case of hunting, or merely for the preference of eating it, may reasonably factor into the analysis.

Letting local communities decide

• Relegating these difficult and complex issues to the local community to select from reasonable alternatives will not satisfy everyone. This imperfect solution is the nature of all controversial matters where reasonable minds disagree.
• Allowing local communities to reasonably experiment with navigating these complicated and complex issues is the best way to resolve them. Moreover, this approach will ultimately reveal the Legal Principle’s best and most favored constructions.
• The low transaction cost of moving to, or doing business with, another local community with a different preferred reasonable construction of how the Legal Principle applies in this area is the most efficient way to determine which laws, rules, and regulations are best overall.
• A diverse, free, and peaceful world can easily accommodate such reasonable differences of opinion on complex and complicated issues.