As promised, my extended piece on the issue of “animal standing” to sue and its support by Cass Sunstein, rumored to be on the fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court and currently appointed to be “regulations czar” for the Obama Administration—is out in the Weekly Standard . I quote Sunstein—and Lawrence Tribe, who also supports the concept.
Animal standing would devastate animal industries financially and practically. Consider just the problem of obtaining liability insurance and the threat of frivolous lawsuits sucking up profits. But it would also be subversive to human exceptionalism:
But animal standing would do more than just plunge the entire animal industry sector into chaos. In one fell swoop, it would both undermine the status of animals as property and elevate them with the force of law toward legal personhood. On an existential level, the perceived exceptional importance of human life would suffer a staggering body blow by erasing one of the clear legal boundaries that distinguishes people from animals. This is precisely the future for which animal rights/liberationists devoutly yearn.
This is an important issue that could be well be implemented. (Anyone saying, “It can’t happen here,” hasn’t been paying attention for the last twenty years.) For more details, hit this link .
