Dear all, this event taking place this Friday at the Law Faculty will be of interest to moral, political and legal philosophers.
TALKING ANIMALS, LAW AND PHILOSOPHY Please join us for the next session of our talk series on Friday, February 26th: Ben Sachs (Lecturer in Philosophy, School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies, University of St. Andrews) will be talking on “A Moderate Position on the Political and Legal Status of Sentient Animals” 26 February 2016, 3:15 – 4:45pm; Room G11, Faculty of Law, 10 West Road, Cambridge Abstract: Since the mid-1990s there has been a steady and growing chorus of voices in legal theory arguing for a change to the legal status of sentient animals, with the first breakthrough occurring in April 2015 when a judge in New York issued an order to show cause on behalf of two chimpanzees, thereby implicitly recognizing their legal personhood. I begin by arguing that there is no internal logic to legal personhood; that is to say, an examination of what legal personhood is and does is insufficient to yield any conclusions about who should have it. Therefore, the scope of legal personhood is not a question for legal theory. I argue, instead, that it is a question for political theory. Furthermore, I contend that it is quite important to disaggregate the three elements of legal personhood: legal standing, legal rights, and non-ownability. I maintain that the question of legal rights is a red herring, leaving us to deal only with legal standing and non-ownability. Drawing on an incipient legal theory, I conclude that the activists are wrong to believe that we wrong sentient animals by depriving them of legal standing. However, the defenders of the status quo are wrong as well; it is impermissible for us to make sentient animals ownable. For further information, please contact Raffael Fasel ([email protected]) or Visa Kurki ([email protected]). -- Visa A.J. Kurki (Mr) PhD student Faculty of Law University of Cambridge Editor-in-chief, Global Journal of Animal Law _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
