See: Animal liberation (disambiguation)

The idea of awarding rights to animals has the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, while Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby argues that the movement has reached the stage the gay rights movement was at 25 years ago. Animal law is taught in 110 out of 180 law schools in the United States, in six law schools in Canada, and is routinely covered in universities in philosophy or applied ethics courses.Dube, Rebecca. The new legal hot topic: animal law, The Globe and Mail, July 15, 2008. In June 2008, Spain became the first country to introduce animal rights, when a cross-party parliamentary committee recommended that rights be extended to the great apes, in accordance with Peter Singer's Great Ape Project.

Critics argue that animals are unable to enter into a social contract or make moral choices, and therefore cannot be regarded as possessors of rights, a position summed up by the philosopher Roger Scruton, who writes that only human beings have duties, and that, "1 corollary is inescapable: we alone have rights."Scruton, Roger. "Animal Rights", City Journal, summer 2000. A parallel argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong with using animals as resources if there is no unnecessary suffering, a view known as the animal welfare position.Frey, R.G. Interests and Rights: The Case against Animals. Clarendon Press, 1980 ISBN 0-19-824421-5 There has also been criticism, including from within the animal rights movement itself, of certain forms of animal rights activism, in particular the destruction of fur farms and animal laboratories by the Animal Liberation Front.

Moral status of animals in the ancient world

main: Human exceptionalism

First, there is the idea of a divine hierarchy based on the theological concept of "dominion," from Genesis (1:20-28), where Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Although the concept of dominion need not entail property rights, it has, over the centuries, been interpreted to imply some form of ownership.Francione, Gary. Animals, Property, and the Law. Temple University Press, 1995, pp. 36-7.

There is also the idea that animals are inferior, because they lack rationality and language, and as such are worthy of less consideration than human beings, or even none. Springing from this is the idea that individual animals have no separate moral identity: a pig is simply an example of the class of pigs, and it is to the class, not to the individual, that human responsibility or stewardship applies. This leads to the argument that the use of individual animals is acceptable so long as, for example, the species is not threatened with extinction.