Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions [Hardcover]

Cass R. Sunstein (Editor), Martha C. Nussbaum (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0195152174 | ISBN-13: 978-0195152173

Millions of people live with cats, dogs, and other pets, which they treat as members of their families. But through their daily behavior, people who love those pets, and greatly care about their welfare, help ensure short and painful lives for millions, even billions of animals that cannot easily be distinguished from dogs and cats. Today, the overwhelming percentage of animals with whom Westerners interact are raised for food. Countless animals endure lives of relentless misery and die often torturous deaths.

The use of animals by human beings, often for important human purposes, has forced uncomfortable questions to center stage: Should people change their behavior? Should the law promote animal welfare? Should animals have legal rights? Should animals continue to be counted as "property"? What reforms make sense?

Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum bring together an all-star cast of contributors to explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, the authors offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. This book offers a state-of-the-art treatment of that rethinking.

Contributors include:
Elizabeth Anderson
Cora Diamond
Richard A. Epstein
David Favre
Gary L. Francione
Gisela Kaplan
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Richard A. Posner
James Rachelsl Lesley J. Rogers
Peter Singer
Mariann Sullivan
Stephen M. Wise
David J. Wolfson

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Eloquent essays."--The Atlantic Monthly

"Our society is in the midst of a major debate over animal rights, our duties, and the legal status of animals. This new compilation of essays has profoundly contributed to this debate.... Animal Rights is an incredible resource introducing readers to the basic issues in animal rights and highlighting directions animal advocates may go..."--Animal Law

"This collection of essays provides a fine introduction to a number of difficult and controversial questions. It is particularly strong in its treatment of the philosophical and legal issues that surround animal rights."--Science

These 14 skillfully edited, high quality, and nicely balanced essays present a wide range of legal, political, and ethical perspectives on animal rights, and include some well-arranged sequences of competing arguments.... Recommended."--Choice

"An important and thought-provoking work. Sunstein and Nussbaum illuminate issues that have the power to unite or divide those of us who care deeply about animals. By fostering better understanding, their book can help light the pathway to common ground."--Kathryn S. Fuller, President, World Wildlife Fund-US

"Happily, the emerging field of animal rights has reached a point mature enough to call for a wide-angle overview of its many facets, with carefully chosen contributions from its founders and most accomplished activists to the writings of its most thought-provoking philosophers. This superbly conceived collection of essays not only meets that need but explores the deepest connections between the protection of non-human species and the frontiers of human rights. Edited with grace by Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, two leading scholars who contribute their own brilliant chapters to this seminal volume, this is a veritable hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy of animal rights and animal welfare. Anyone genuinely concerned about the creatures who are our kin will have to read this book from cover to cover."--Laurence H. Tribe, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School

"An impressive collection: essential reading for anyone interested in the debates over animal rights, and indeed for anyone who cares about how humans treat animals."--George Pitcher, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Princeton University

"Edited by a distinguished legal scholar and one of the most important philosophers of our day, this volume offers a remarkably fresh collection of essays exploring our relationship--moral, legal, social, and epistemological--to nonhuman animals. A creative tension emerges from the exchange of competing and often ingenious arguments. Readers will profit from a wealth of empirical data about animals' capacities and existing practices and institutions of animal use. The book is perhaps most distinctive in its examination of animals in relation to the law, several authors providing concrete suggestions for legal reform.
Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions is an excellent choice for law school and applied ethics courses." --David DeGrazia, author of Taking Animals Seriously

About the Author

Cass R. Sunstein is Karl Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. Together, they previously edited Clones and Cloning. They are frequent contributors to popular journals and newspapers. . Sunstein's recent books include Why Societies Need Dissent and Designing Democracy; Nussbaum is recently author of Upheavals of Thought and For Love of Country.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195152174
• ISBN-13: 978-0195152173
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,744,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars refreshingly new perspectives September 6, 2005

By George Seymour

Format:Hardcover

Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions explores the human - animal relationship from a range of perspectives. It aims to assist in the fundamental rethinking of the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals. The book consists of fourteen chapters, each written by a different author. It is this format of the text, drawing on an impressive list of contributors, which makes it so distinctive and significant. The chapters flow surprisingly well, in some cases engaging with each other's arguments. While the great proportion of the book is concerned with positive reforms towards the increased recognition of the interests of nonhuman animals it does, rather uniquely, contain contributions from both sides of the animal rights debate.

Those acquainted with recent animal rights literature will be familiar with some of the contributors' work. Steven Wise contributes an excellent chapter which is adapted from his book "Drawing the Line", while Gary Francione's chapter draws on ideas mapped out in his groundbreaking work "Animals, Property and the Law". In addition to the contributions of the more prominent authors, the book contains a number of stimulating and fresh ideas from thinkers who haven't published extensively in this field.

The book represents a comprehensive exploration of the major contemporary animal rights debates. The chapters on law and policy reform are particularly engaging and insightful, with a number of the contributors putting forward substantial and compelling suggestions for reform.

It is certainly not an introductory type of text. The book is distinctly academic in tone, as one would expect given the overwhelming majority of the contributors are professors from prestigious universities.

A highly recommended read and a valuable reference for those interested in theoretical debates on animal rights. It's a timely book for the animal rights movement representing a compendium of fresh ideas and a roadmap for legal reform.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The New Standard May 2, 2004

By Matt

Format:Hardcover

Nussbaum and Sunstein have put together something very special. This book mixes the standard animal rights fare of Singer, Wise, and Francione with exciting new contributions by thinkers like Catharine MacKinnon, Richard Posner, as well as Sunstein and Nussbaum themselves. The book is well edited, with the various chapters flowing from issue to issue, and responding to each others arguments. The work explores not only what we own to animals, but also what practical approaches might deliver. The animal rights issue show not merely to be a "for or against" issue. Instead, we see a nuanced debate about the place of animals in theory and practice.

This book is essential to academic audiences, but should also prove accessible to general audiences. I suspect this will become a standard text for future animal rights courses.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A balanced and insightful book September 21, 2007

By Paul Franciosa

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

MY RATING SYSTEM:

* - if you have to chose between torture and reading this book, then you might want to consider reading the book - although it depends on just how severe the torture would be.

** - if you've lost your job and have quite a bit of free time on your hands, and don't have anything else better to do, then you might want to consider reading this book; don't expect to learn much or really be entertained. It will however, help you pass the time until your death.

*** - meh...I'm indifferent. Reading this book will not alter your life in any significant way, yet it is not so horrendously dreadful that your taking the time to read it will be a complete waste of time.

**** - Good book to great book zone here. You should probably read this book if you have some spare time. This book could be interesting, entertaining, or informative.

***** - Outstanding book! Make time to read this book - you'll learn or be entertained or intrigued. The book might even be good enough to provide original or helpful insights into the world that we live in.

REVIEW:

Sunstein and Naussbaum have put together a fantastic collection of essays on the controversial and often incompletely understood topic of animal rights. This book is a must for any self-proclaimed animal rights proponents and, I think, a very informative read for anyone interested in the subject of the interaction between humans and animals. While the essays can, at times, be dense and academic (after all, there are some real intellectual heavyweights who have contributed to this book), I found most of the essays to be well worth the time and energy required to go through them.

The book starts out with several essays on issues that form a theoretical or principled debate on the issue of the role and appropriateness of animal rights, often drawing on and developing philosophical arguments to support a variety of competing positions. Generally, the essays search for the existence of a foundation for 'animal rights', or, as some of the authors might argue, if one exists at all. The middle section of the book tended to focus the more practical foundations and implications of a system of animal rights, including an informative essay by David J. Wolfson and Mariann Sullivan on the restricted application of animal cruelty laws in the North American agribusiness sector. The final essays of the book tend to be theoretical prescriptive explorations, examining where animal rights developments might progress in the future.

In summary, I think that this was an extremely valuable book, and definitely one that I will find myself returning to several times in the future.