Abstract
One economic institution that defines the place of animals in the economy is property law. Animal activists have long identified animals’ status as property as one of the most important barriers to recognizing animals’ interests, welfare, or rights. For example, Gary Francione is famous for arguing that the most important “right” that animals can claim is the right not to be the property of humans. Joan Dunayer writes that “By defining nonhuman animals as property, the law sanctions their enslavement and murder.” Because property law gives a significant amount of discretionary power to humans over and against their owned animals, the practice of animal ownership has received considerable attention among animal advocates.
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Notes
- 1.
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Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation (Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2001), 170.
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This list of “rights” is not exhaustive. Consider the following examinations related to this metaphor: Thomas W. Merrill and Henry E. Smith, “Making Coasean Property More Coasean,” SSRN eLibrary, February 9, 2011, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1758846; Robert Goldstein, “Green Wood in the Bundle of Sticks: Fitting Environmental Ethics and Ecology into Real Property Law,” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 25, no. 2 (December 1, 1998): 347; Stephen R. Munzer, “A Bundle Theorist Holds on to His Collection of Sticks,” Econ Journal Watch 8, no. 3 (2011): 265–73.
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John M Meyer, “The Concept of Private Property and the Limits of the Environmental Imagination,” Political Theory 37, no. 1 (February 1, 2009): 99–127, doi:10.1177/0090591708326644.
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Richard A. Epstein, “Holdouts, Externalities, and the Single Owner: One More Salute to Ronald Coase,” Journal of Law and Economics 36, no. 1 (April 1, 1993): 553–86; Meyer, “The Concept of Private Property and the Limits of the Environmental Imagination.”
- 10.
Robert Garner, “Political Ideology and the Legal Status of Animals,” Animal Law 8 (2002): 77–91.
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F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (September 1, 1945): 519–30.
- 12.
Ibid.
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- 17.
Steven McMullen and Daniel Molling, “Environmental Ethics, Economics, and Property Law,” in Law and Social Economics: Essays in Ethical Values for Theory, Practice, and Policy, ed. Mark D. White (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
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R. Quentin Grafton et al., “Incentive-Based Approaches to Sustainable Fisheries,” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 63, no. 3 (March 1, 2006): 699–710, doi:10.1139/f05-247; Christopher Costello, Steven D. Gaines, and John Lynham, “Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?,” Science 321, no. 5896 (September 19, 2008): 1678–81, doi:10.1126/science.1159478.
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Costello, Gaines, and Lynham, “Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?”
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Jonathan Adler, “Property Rights and Fishery Conservation,” The Atlantic, May 24, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/property-rights-and-fishery-conservation/257604/.
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Jonathan Adler, “Money or Nothing: The Adverse Environmental Consequences of Uncompensated Land Use Control,” Boston College Law Review 49, no. 2 (March 1, 2008): 301; Jonathan Adler, “Back to the Future of Conservation: Changing Perceptions of Property Rights & Environmental Protection,” NYU Journal of Law & Liberty 1, no. 3 (2005): 987–1022.
- 28.
Richard A. Epstein, “Animals as Objects, or Subjects, of Rights,” in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, ed. Cass Sunstein and Nussbaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 143–61.
- 29.
Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill, The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford Economics and Finance, 2004).
- 30.
P.J. Hill, “The Non-Tragedy of the Bison Commons,” The PERCOLATOR, January 2, 2012, http://www.perc.org/blog/non-tragedy-bison-commons.
- 31.
See also McMullen and Molling, “Environmental Ethics, Economics, and Property Law,” 28.
- 32.
Anderson, “If Hayek and Coase Were Environmentalists: Linking Economics and Ecology.”
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Douglas J. McCauley, “Selling out on Nature,” Nature 443, no. 7107 (September 6, 2006): 27–28, doi:10.1038/443027a.
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Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).
- 35.
Gary L. Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); Thomas Kelch, “Toward a Non-Property Status for Animals,” NYU Environmental Law Journal 6 (1998): 531.
- 36.
Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights, 66.
- 37.
F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk, Compassion, by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 102.
- 38.
See, for example, Alton Brown, “Alton Brown on the End of Meat as We Know It,” WIRED, September 17, 2013, http://www.wired.com/2013/09/fakemeat/; Kate Burt, “Is This the End of Meat?,” The Independent, May 19, 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/is-this-the-end-of-meat-7765871.html; Rahim Kanani, “The Future of Meat Is Meatless, Just as Tasty, and About to Change the World,” Forbes: Leadership, March 6, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/rahimkanani/2014/03/06/the-future-of-meat-is-meatless-just-as-tasty-and-about-to-change-the-world/.
- 39.
“Silicon Valley Gets a Taste for Food,” The Economist, March 7, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21645497-tech-startups-are-moving-food-business-make-sustainable-versions-meat.
- 40.
While much farm support goes to plant agriculture, as noted earlier, Simon notes that 63 % of farm subsidies directly or indirectly support animal products. Only a small part of these subsidized products can be used to make plant-based meats. David Robinson Simon, Meatonomics: How the Rigged Economics of Meat and Dairy Make You Consume Too Much—and How to Eat Better, Live Longer, and Spend Smarter (Newburyport, MA: Conari Press, 2013).
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McMullen, S. (2016). Property Rights and Animal Rights. In: Animals and the Economy. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43474-6_9
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