Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility

by Martha C. Nussbaum

What is the Capabilities Approach (CA), and why would lawyers passionate about animal justice care about it?21 It is easy to say what it is not. The CA does not rank animals by likeness to humans or seek special privileges for those deemed most “like us,” as do some other popular theoretical approaches. The CA has concern for the finch and the pig as much as the whale and the elephant. And it argues that the human form of life is simply irrelevant when we think about what each type of animal needs and deserves. What is relevant is their own forms of life. Just as humans seek to be able to enjoy the characteristic goods of a human life, so a finch seeks a finch’s life and the whale a whale’s life. (And for each, room for individual differentiation is a part of the life they seek.) We should extend ourselves and learn, not lazily picture animals as lesser humans, seeking a life sort of like our own. According to the CA, each sentient creature (capable of having a subjective point of view on the world and feeling pain and pleasure) should have the opportunity to flourish in the form of life characteristic for that creature.