The emerging field of animal rights law explores whether animals can or should have legal personhood, standing to sue, or rights enforceable in court.
Animal rights law addresses the deepest structural problem in animal welfare: that animals are legally classified as property without interests, making their welfare legally subordinate to the interests of their owners. Property can be protected from destruction, but property cannot suffer and cannot have interests the law is bound to respect. Changing the property status of animals — even incrementally, by granting specific legal protections to cognitively complex species — would fundamentally shift the legal framework within which welfare advocacy operates.