May
1997
Law
and Changing the Order
Review Editorial by Julie Hughes |
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While the April issue of Satya took
a look at those who were in some way going beyond the law to
stop environmental destruction or animal abuse, this issue is
a look at those who use the law to change things.
An interview with Dan Mills, office co-ordinator
of the McLibel Campaign in Great Britain, points out some of
the many uses of the law outside the conventional prosecution
or defense of a case -- uses which Helena Silverstein, in
her book Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the Animal Rights
Movement, also indicates are valuable for the progress of social
movements such as the animal rights movement. Silverstein argues
that law suits can be used to open barriers by highlighting injustices
and bringing into public discourse meanings other than those
currently defined by law. A law suit, she says, can help educate
the public through publicity and consciousness-raising. In addition,
she writes, it can provide a focus for a movement and mobilize
forces, while at the same time creating potential political pressure
and leverage for change.
The McLibel case, just about to conclude, provides the proof of Silverstein's
argument, much to McDonald's great dismay. This was a case the multinational
corporation thought would never come to court. As a result of the trial,
the factsheet McDonald's wished to quash has been displayed more widely,
and the practices McDonald's wished to hide publicized more completely,
than could ever have been possible if the two defendants hadn't decided
to fight.
While author Silverstein protests (perhaps too much) that her book
is intended to be neither "for" nor "against" animal rights,
she nevertheless strongly defends the idea that animal rights neither
trivializes human rights nor dilutes the notion of rights to meaninglessness.
Animal rights, she argues, works to break down the false demarcations
that have been used in the past to establish the superiority of one
group over another: i.e., racism, sexism, and now speciesism.
Nevertheless, there are, as Silverstein notes, drawbacks to the use
of the concept of animals' rights. First and foremost, is the inadmissibility
in court of the term itself -- technically known as "standing." This
is clear from David Wolfson's article on farm animals. Increasingly
exempted from any anti-cruelty statutes, farm animals will shortly
have no protection at all. Silverstein shows that this is a huge problem
with the Constitution and law as they currently stand. Animals are
still considered property and the objects rather than subjects of the
law. Litigation is arduous and often ineffective. And, as Silverstein
points out dryly, just as litigation can force the spotlight to shine
on injustices and challenge legal meanings within the legal system
itself, those in power still have more ability to manipulate legal
meaning to their advantage and so disseminate it to the outside world.
Still, animals need a counterclaim against humans. Silverstein argues
that the animal protection movement has a strategic, fluid, and sophisticated
concept of rights that allows it to be flexible in picking battles
and communicating messages to the public. She contends, however, that
it does not pay to be too hung up on the total efficacy of rights,
because "rights language and litigation are at once constrained by
prevailing legal meaning and subject to alternative reconstructions
of meaning." This view is offset by professor of law Gary Francione,
whose book Rain Without Thunder is reviewed in this issue. Francione's
contention is that there is a muddle over animal rights in the animal
protection movement, whereby -- in his view falsely -- the advocacy
of animal rights is seen as utopian or impractically absolutist.
Silverstein's book -- thorough and readable, yet somewhat over-deliberate
in its argument -- is ultimately sanguine about the use of law. While
Rod Coronado, whose interview concludes in this issue, may be a victim
of the law, he too has used his incarcerated status to focus on other
imprisoned beings and our commonality with them.
Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the
Animal Rights Movement by Helena Silverstein. University
of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor (1996). $39.50 hbd. 312 pages.
