Towards a Vegan Jurisprudence

Book excerpt: Towards a Vegan Jurisprudence: The Need for a Reorientation of Human Rightsargues that, in order to give effect to animal rights, human society is obliged to question the extent to which our social norms permit us to manifest compassionate justice to other animals. Jeanette Rowley posits a new perspective on the theory and practice of human rights to accommodate the demands of vegans for rights for nonhuman animals, recognizing the existing argument that the idea grounding human rights is our ethical responsibility to the precarious, mortal other. Rowley develops this principle to ground the rights claims of vegans in the ethics of alterity, applying the concept to nonhuman others to ground the protection of other animals and provide a new approach to human rights litigation to accommodate vegans, calling for the reconceptualization of the very idea of human rights.