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

"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

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.

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.

Introduction: What Are Animal Rights?, Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago

Part I: Current Debates

1. Animal Rights, One Step At A Time, Stephen M. Wise, Vermont Law School

2. Animal Rights: Legal, Philosophical, and Pragmatic Perspectives, Richard A. Posner, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School

3. Ethics Beyond Species and Beyond Instincts: A Reply to Richard Posner, Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University

4. Eating Meat and Eating People, Cora Diamond, Kenan Professor and University Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia

5. Taking Animal Interests Seriously, Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach Distinguished Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers University School of Law--Newark

6. Animals As Objects, or Subjects, of Rights, Richard A. Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School, Peter and Kirsten Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution

7. Drawing Lines, James Rachels, University Professor of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham

8. All Animals Are Not Equal: The Interface Between Scientific Knowledge and Legislation for Animal Rights, Lesley J. Rogers and Gisela Kaplan, both Professors of Neuroscience and Animal Behavior at the University of New England, Australia

Part II: New Directions

9. Foxes in the Hen House: Animals, Agribusiness, and the Law, David J. Wolfson, senior associate at Milbank, Tweed, HadleyandMcCloy LLP, Lecturer in Law Harvard Law School, and adjunct professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Mariann Sullivan, Deputy Chief Court Attorney at the New York State Appellate Division, First Department, former chair of the animal law committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York

10. A New Property Status for Animals: Equitable Self-Ownership, David Favre: Professor, Michigan State University DCL College of Law

11. Can Animals Sue?, Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago

12. Of Mice and Men: A Feminist Fragment on Animal Rights, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and long-term visitor, University of Chicago Law School

13. Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life, Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

14. "Beyond Compassion and Humanity": Justice for Non-Human Animals, Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago