What Is Justice?

The Fourth of Four Key Values in Animal Rights

Equality, Justice, Fairness

We’ve explored three of the four points on my animal rights moral compass. Truth guides us in our journey towards ethical relations with animals. Compassion shows us the path to those who need our help. Nonviolence is the light we follow in all our dealings with animals. We come now to my fourth key value. Justice brings together compassion, truth, and nonviolence to build the road we take to animal liberation. Compassion, truth, and nonviolence are justice in action.

Justice in relation to animals has three aspects:

Equality: to ensure that the law recognises animals, like humans, as sentient beings in their own right in order for them to receive their due legal protection.

Fairness: to require the law to protect animals, appropriate to their needs, as subjects of a life with inherent rights.

Duty: to insist that individuals and society respect and enforce justice for animals.

Justice is usually something we feel the absence of—when we’re denied it, through unfair and unequal treatment, or when we witness someone being subjected to discrimination or repression. Injustice is often a consequence of prejudice based on a feeling of superiority (of gender, sexual orientation, race, or species). It occurs when we’re indifferent to the plight of others (whatever their species), and fail to recognise the truth of their circumstances. Injustice can lead to violence, whether physical, verbal, or mental.

Although we may think of justice as an abstract virtue, available to every human being if all things were equal, the meaning of justice is in fact fully embedded in the cultural traditions of societies. It’s subject to the influence of political, moral, economic, and religious values and realities. In other words, all things are rarely, if ever, equal, which means that justice isn’t a given and must be fought for and continually protected against those who would seek to overturn it in favour of their own values and realities.

It's hardly necessary to highlight the many examples in history of injustice towards individuals, cultures, societies, and even peoples. Those in authority seize an opportunity to exert power and control over others to further their interests, which requires either the exploited group to speak out, or for others to do so on their behalf. Either way, claims for justice are challenges to authority; and all too often, the decisions about justice are made by those in power with control over others—which means that justice is often perverted, as well as delayed and denied, and why the fight for justice must take place in the political arena as well as within the moral or legal frameworks of society.

Never Won Easily

Justice is never won easily. Authority would prefer to ignore injustice rather than confront it. Power and control are never relinquished readily. The case has to be made; the work has to be done; people and their elected representatives need to be convinced, over many years, if not generations, and through several stages. This is the struggle that the animal rights moral compass should lead us through, to liberate animals from human tyranny. We are embarked on a campaign for justice for animals.

Our society rarely thinks of animals in terms of justice, or of our treatment of them as a form of injustice. We establish anti-cruelty statutes and laws and regulations encouraging humane attitudes and behaviour. In a handful of cases, prohibitions specifically outlaw cruel acts against certain species or in very particular ways. Notwithstanding these hard-won victories, our power and control over animals are absolute. We are their injustice. Indeed, I often think that how we treat animals is so immeasurably and unbelievably exploitative that we are beyond any scale of justice.

Thankfully, the idea of justice for animals is beginning to receive attention—not least because more of us are placing animal rights within the context of a larger commitment to social justice, such as for civil rights and gender equality. More are coming to the realisation that justice for animals and justice for humans are inseparable, interrelated, and mutually beneficial, and that simply to deny justice to animals when it’s enjoyed by humans is speciesist.

What might justice—as opposed to simple charity or kindness towards animals—look like within the context of a society composed of laws that regulate competing interests and are underpinned by fundamental rights that protect the inviolability of the human person, private ownership, and an orientation towards freedom of conscience, association, and movement?

A justice-based solution is, like compassion, tougher and harder-edged than charity. If charity depends on individual good-heartedness, justice reflects the sanction (in both meanings of the word) of society and the enforcement of law and order.

Domesticated companion animals are, perhaps, the most immediate and easiest targets for a justice-based reconsideration of our obligation to nonhumans. For other kinds of domesticated animals and animals whom we exploit for experimentation and leisure activities, we need to turn to political science for insight into how far the animal rights movement has to go to make the moral and legal status of animals a mainstream political issue.

The animal industrial complex is an injustice on a massive scale. Attempts to ameliorate the conditions for animals in these facilities—such as making sure the animals are unconscious when slaughtered or their cage size is increased—don’t address the injustice of the facts of their lives and deaths at our hands. Justice sits squarely opposed to an instrumental use of any being, even should some of those animals’ interests be respected. Humane slaughter laws may in some perverse way be charitable in that they kill the animal more swiftly or with less violence, but they are not just.

Subjects of a Life

In recent years, animal welfare science in the biological and veterinary sciences and animal studies in the social sciences and humanities have been presenting, at times, radically different visions of animal cognition and sentience than heretofore. The former work reveals animals not merely to be ‘subjects of a life’, as Regan has characterised their cognitive realm, but creatures capable of forming cultures, languages, and an array of activities that point to a sophisticated form of self-consciousness. The latter studies show us how deeply embedded animals in our social structures, our imaginations, and creative endeavours, and (sometimes disturbingly) embody our pathologies in coping with our mutual animal natures.

These revelations about our animal brethren are paralleled in the emerging disciplines of animal law and political science around animals. In the United States, Australia, and Europe, animal law is enjoying significant growth in research and litigation; however, the study of animals and politics is less developed, although there are indications that this is changing.

For many years, Robert Garner has stood out as the primary political theorist exploring the political status of animals. His research considers society’s treatment of animals within the context of justice and the application of ideal and non-ideal theory to animal ethics concerning legislation regulating and ending animal suffering. Justice for animals should be rights-based but humans, he argues, have a greater interest in life and liberty. Nonetheless, the consequences for animals are far-reaching as many of the current ways in which animals are currently used would be viewed as unjust. New research in the political status of animals is being led by Siobhan O’Sullivan in Animals, Equality and Democracy (2011) and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka in Zoopolis (2011).

O’Sullivan makes the case that existing inconsistencies within the law relating to animals should be addressed. For example, laws concerning dogs in the home and in the laboratory: one set refer to companion animals; the others research tools; and the difference reflects the contradictory nature of how people view dogs. O’Sullivan argues that the law that establishes the highest standard of animal welfare should be applied consistently wherever the law relates to that species, regardless of the circumstances. In other words, we should treat the animal in the laboratory no worse than the law stipulates that we should treat the animal in the home. If we don’t cut up our companion animal in the living room, we shouldn't do it in the lab.

Donaldson and Kymlicka apply political theories on citizenship to animals. They argue:

Some animals should be seen as forming separate sovereign communities on their own territories (animals in the wild vulnerable to human invasion and colonization); some animals are akin to migrants or denizens who choose to move into areas of human habitation (liminal opportunistic animals); and some animals should be seen as full citizens of the polity because of the way in which they’ve been bred over generations for interdependence with humans (domesticated animals).’

Speciesist Preconceptions

Each of these ideas challenges prevailing norms about the ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ use and position of animals in society. And that is precisely the point: to present ideas that might alter our speciesist preconceptions about the proper place of nonhumans in ‘our’ society. If they seem wacky or unfeasible, it’s because so little groundwork has been laid within the polity to reconfigure our relationships. The animal rights movement has vigorously claimed moral rights for animals. It now needs to persuade society and its representational governments to recognise legal rights for animals, which includes enforcement of those laws by the state.

Long a moral crusade, animal rights now needs to be a political movement as well, embedding itself fully within other social justice movements and drawing inspiration, support, and knowledge from the other activists. Advocates need to engage in these other struggles, not merely because it's the ethical thing to do, but because we need to show that our struggle is the struggle of these other social movements and their coalitions as well: that animal rights is their fight, too. We’ve long expressed our bafflement at how other social movements fail to ‘get’ that animal rights is a social justice concern. We need to show them that animal rights is also about fighting food insecurity, protecting the environment and biodiversity, and opposing sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice.

How many times have you found yourself saying

‘There ought to be a law against [undesirable activity here]!?’

Well, there should be laws against abusing animals. Tougher laws, enforceable laws. These laws will obviate the need for personal revelations, moral shocks, or even the vaguest form of empathy. Animals won’t simply be the recipients of charity from the kind-hearted or the socially outcast. They'll receive justice. Laws not only reflect our society’s norms, they also guide them. Statutes, vigilantly guarded and properly enforced, will establish a set of legal, moral, and psychological conditions that will change society in such a way that it won’t only be illegal to harm an animal, but it’ll also be immoral, and socially unacceptable, even deviant to do so.

As it is, animal advocates are boxed in. We’re frightened of being told by other social justice movements that animals aren’t as important as humans. We’re frightened that we’ll be called sentimental, irrational, self-righteous or just plain weird. We’re frightened that others won’t be as committed or absolute or uncompromised as we are. We’re frightened that, when push comes to shove, the politicians will let us down because we’re supposedly one-issue voters, and that issue just isn’t important enough.

Vilification and Opposition

Well, these are the risks that any movement has to take as it grows up. It has to expect vilification and opposition. We have to expect to be called ‘radicals’ and ‘terrorists’ and a whole host of even more unpleasant names. What we do is hold on to the four key values, and not only won’t we earn those labels, but the general public—whom I genuinely believe is more open to our cause than we advocates imagine—will stick those labels on those who oppose us.

Fortunately, most of us live in societies where the free exchange of ideas and the right to petition the government and elect one’s representatives are given. True, money interests and powerful lobbies exist that make it hard to get through to legislators. So, start small and start locally. Pick an issue, analyse the problem, and propose a solution. Attend your local council or ward meetings. Bring in experts, write policy papers, give money, and hold fundraisers. Organise, campaign, join a political party, and run for office yourself. Show the politician you have a constituency; do the same with other groups in your area. Build bridges, develop a network, and make animal advocates an unavoidable part of the constituency that supports a candidate.

Animals cannot organise themselves into their social movement or be the agents of their liberation. We have to do it for them, on their behalf. This onerous responsibility makes it even more important for us to understand how to achieve animal rights. If we are to be serious, we’ll also have to recognise the benefits we accrue from our exploitation of animals. I happen to think the animal industrial complex overstates these benefits, just as it underplays or ignores the considerable costs. But we need to admit that much of the public remains reluctant to give up any pleasures or entitlement (e.g., eating meat) even though these pleasures may, in fact, be negative and the entitlement a burden on the body politic.

Here, too, the animal advocacy movement will need to be resilient and sophisticated. All progressive social movements have met with claims that should their particular goal be realised, civilisation will collapse, the economy will tank, and all progress will come to a grinding halt. The animal industrial complex will continue to pit one social group against another in an effort to deflect attention away from its massive and systemic destruction of sentient beings.

Continuous Reinvention

As I have stressed throughout Growl, there are important issues related to understanding animal rights as a class issue—an aspect that the movement has insufficiently addressed. When I look around at the animal rights movement in the U.K. and the U.S., I see a largely white, middle-class, affluent, and educated group of people who care passionately. We need to do much more to understand how to relate animal rights to the lives of ordinary, working people, some of whom are disengaged or disenfranchised from society. My response to this and every challenge remains to understand animal rights through the moral compass of the four key values of truth, compassion, nonviolence, and justice.

Looking back over my five decades of involvement with the international animal rights movement I have the advantage of watching organisations emerge, succeed, and, in some cases, stagnate and fail. Similarly, I have witnessed charismatic pioneers become entrenched leaders protecting the interests of their organisations and in so doing become conservative in outlook, despite their nominally radical stance. In some cases, I recall their criticism of a previous generation of leaders whom they now come to resemble! All this speaks to the issue that for social movements to thrive and succeed they must continuously reinvent themselves while staying true to their missions. We need to recognise the ambivalence inherent in holding power and wielding control over any type of institution. Organisations have life cycles, including periods of activity and inactivity, and clarity and purpose.

As Tom Regan notes in The Case for Animal Rights:

Not only are animals incapable of defending their rights, they are similarly incapable of defending themselves against those who profess to defend them. Unlike us, they cannot disown or repudiate the claims made on their behalf. That makes speaking for them a greater, not a lesser, moral undertaking; and this makes the burdens of one’s errors and fallacies when championing their rights heavier, not lighter.

Adapted from Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate, with a Foreword by Brian May, and published by Lantern Publishing and Media in 2014. The Four Key Values in Animal Rights are Truth, Compassion, Nonviolence, and Justice. This is the fourth in a four-part series.

References

Donaldson, Sue and Will Kymlicka. 2011. Zoopolis. Oxford University Press.

Garner, Robert. 2005. The Political Theory of Animal Rights. Manchester University Press.

O’Sullivan, Siobhan. 2011. Animals, Equality and Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. University of California Press.