"The problem with relying on animal welfare laws is that they are oftentimes futile in vindicating an animal's interests because, under the law, nonhuman animals are classified as legal things," Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, told The Dodo. "What the Nonhuman Rights Project is trying to do is have courts recognize and grant basic legal rights to some of the most cognitively complex species of animals like great apes, elephants and cetaceans." Currently, the Nonhuman Rights Project is fighting for the rights of animals in three ongoing lawsuits in New York State, using the common law writs of habeas corpus to seek legal personhood status for certain animals.
"Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?"
The Nonhuman Rights Project represents one approach for righting the wrongs too often done to some animals. There are other approaches as well. Laws for animals become complicated because there is disagreement about what qualities should entail protection under the law in the first place.
Some thinkers, like Peter Singer, believe that the criteria for protection under the law shouldn't be the ability to use language or to reason but the capacity to suffer. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote (centuries ago!) that "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?"