Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Animal Rights - Literature of Liberty, Spring 1982, vol. 5, No. 1

Return to Title Page for Literature of Liberty, Spring 1982, vol. 5, No. 1

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Political Theory

Animal Rights - Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, Spring 1982, vol. 5, No. 1 [1982]

Edition used:

Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio.

Part of: Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 20 vols. 19781-982

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Animal Rights

Ben Gerson

  • National Law Journal

“Unleashing Animal Rights: The Movement to Give New Legal Weight to Man's ‘Servants.’” The National Law Journal (January 4, 1982): 1, 20, 30.

Lawyers, academics, and political activists have banded together to limit humans' dominion over non-human animals. Two organizations—San Francisco's Attorneys For Animal Rights (AFAR) and the Pennsylvania-based Society for Animal Rights (SAR) go beyond the typical humane or animal welfare society and base their defense on the conviction that animals, like people, have rights arising from their very existence. The struggle for the rights of animals may seem laughable, but is comparable to the historical struggle for recognizing the rights of Indians, incompetents, and aliens.

Animal rights advocates are making their voices heard. For the past two years SAR has been publishing the Animal Rights Law Reporter under the editorship of Prof. Henry Mark Holzer. At the end of 1981, the same group sponsored the first national Conference on Animal Rights Law in New York. Both SAR and AFAR seek to use the legal system to improve the lot of animals by challenging the view (often written into legislation) that animals are merely man's servants. Scholars have developed arguments to grant legal status to animals and to call into question the cruelty involved in the so-called factory farming methods of animal slaughter.

Legally, advocates for animal rights have adopted the analogy of guardianship for legal incompetents to protect animals. If “incompetent human beings have rights, why should not animals, who can in some instances both reason and feel more deeply than certain incompetent, if enfranchised, human beings like Karen Ann Quinlan?” This legal defense derives from the “Magna Carta of the animal rights movement,” Peter Singer's 1975 book, Animal Liberation.

lf0353-17_1982v1_figure_006

II

History & Liberty

The following summaries contain two distinct but interrelated kinds of topics: the historiography of individual liberty and individuals who have advanced our understanding of liberty in history. Particularly relevant to our lead essay on the French liberal historian Alexis de Tocqueville are those summaries discussing the historiographical traditions which view history as the drama of liberty: the advance of civilization is the progress of individual freedom and emancipation from arbitrary power and authority. A suitable introduction to such a liberal historiography is Mark Glat's opening analysis which argues that John Locke, a founder of the classical liberal tradition, was not the caricature of the ahistorical rationalist, but, in fact, possessed a lively and sophisticated historical sensibility. Related notes on the developed historical sense found in various champions of the liberal temper are found in other summaries by Seaberg, Shklar, Winthrop (on Tocqueville's Old Régime), Tenenbaum, Dodge, and Porter.

To supplement these studies, the reader is advised to consult the Bibliography to John Lukacs' Tocqueville essay (pp. 36–42), especially the following studies:

Gargan, Edward T. De Tocqueville. Studies in Modern European Literature and Thought. London: Bowes and Bowes, 1965.

—, “The Formation of Tocqueville's Historical Thought.” Review of Politics 24 (January 1962): 48–61.

Liggio, Leonard P. “Charles Dunoyer and French Classical Liberalism.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 1 (Summer 1977): 153–178.

Mellon, Stanley. The Political Uses of History: A Study of Historians in the French Restoration. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.

Siedentop, Larry. “Two Liberal Traditions.” In The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin. Ed. by Alan Ryan. Oxford & New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979, pp. 153–174.

White, Hayden V. “Tocqueville: Historical Realism as Tragedy.” In Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973, pp. 45–58.

Of particular value in orienting one to the intellectual currents and themes animating Tocqueville's French liberal historiography are the Mellon and Siedentop studies cited above. These essays place Tocqueville in his own historical context which was deeply influenced by Francois Guizot and Mme. de Staël's Coppet circle. (see Tenenbaum's summary on Coppet and Constant). A clear line of historical continuity unites Enlightenment historiography, the Coppet circle, and Tocqueville: all regarded history as the advance of individual freedom.