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Chapter Three - “One Small Characteristic”

Conceptualizing Harm to Animals and Legal Personhood

from Part I - Injury and the Construction of Legal Subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2018

By
Claire E. Rasmussen
Edited by
Anne Bloom ,
David M. Engel  and
Michael McCann
Anne Bloom
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
David M. Engel
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
Michael McCann
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

The liberal model of the rights-bearing subject, an autonomous, rational being able to make claims on its own behalf, has been a barrier to legal mobilization for some marginalized subjects. Among these liminal subjects, non-human animals have been recognized as property under the law, a status that has limited the capacity of legal activism on their behalf. This chapter explores the novel deployment of the law on behalf of two subjects, Tommy the chimpanzee and Johnny Justice, a pitbull once used in fighting. The arguments used by legal activists focus on the injustice of the suffering endured by the animals rather than focusing on their capacities—or lack thereof—as autonomous subjects. Doing so enables a set of claims about a moral and legal obligation to minimize and compensate for their injuries. However, while the focus on vulnerability does not require the animals to first establish that they are rights-bearing subjects deserving of legal representation, the universalizing gesture of “shared corporeality” obfuscates the ways that new hierarchies are generated in representing some subjects as in need of legal protection. In short, the question becomes: who gets help and who is admitted to privilege?
Type
Chapter
Information
Injury and Injustice
The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress
 , pp. 76 - 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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