Animal Welfare Law and Animal Rights Law
Adam P. Karp, Esq., Animal Law

Animal law can be divided into Animal Welfare Law and Animal Rights Law.

Animal Welfare Law confers benefits upon nonhuman animals indirectly, based on their relationship to a human being. In short, the law views them only through their ward or as being “owned” by a human. Without the tether to you or me, animals have the functional status of waste. However,  animal cruelty laws protect most animals, in certain contexts, regardless of their designation as owned.

Animal Rights Law recognizes protection, entitlements, and standing for the animal based on the animal’s inherent dignitary interests as a sentient being that may suffer, reason or find “completeness” or “satisfaction” in “freely” pursuing its instinctual and filial imperatives. Animal rights law, thus, attempts to vindicate the interests of the animal based on principles that may be said to “inhere” within, rather than manifest from without (through human agency).

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