A Strategic Proposal for Legally Protecting Wild Animals

Abstract

Philosophers have long articulated theories of animal rights. However, concrete questions such as “How should the Constitution of Australia change if it recognized the right to self-determination of some wild animals?” have rarely, if ever, been studied. Inspired by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s theory of animal rights, this article explores a legal strategy about how wild animals’ interest in self-determination could be recognized in the Australian Constitution. I argue that conferring strong constitutional protection to wild animals regarding self-determination would require: (1) recognizing fundamental legal rights of wild animals to political representation, immunity from being objects of property rights, self-determination, and territory, and (2) defining to whom the proposed rights would apply and identifying the territories over which animals would have a right to govern themselves. I offer a strategic proposal in relation to point 2 and suggest that granting a legal status beyond the personhood–property divide, what I call “legal animalhood,” is the soundest strategy to recognize the fundamental legal rights of wild animals. Finally, I show that the proposed strategy is a better approach to confer strong legal protection to wild animals than Karen Bradshaw’s property rights strategy and ecocentric approaches.