Jim Henley asks for libertarian positions on animal rights. As I’ve written here before, my take is similar to Gene Healy’s:

Here’s Nozick on animal rights. I find him pretty convincing, though not convincing enough to give up steak. (Which isn’t really his fault). In Anarchy State and Utopia, though not, I think, in the linked excerpt, he has a hypothetical about alien beings whose consciousnesses are so advanced they are to us as we are to cows; Nozick asks whether they’d be justified in making us into Human Jerky snacks. It’s a good question, but I don’t know how you avoid taking the point to the point of Jainism. And I’ve never been able to develop an animal rights perspective that isn’t based heavily on cuteness. That’s why dogs have more rights than dolphins and I don’t care what marine biologists say.

I find the headline “Michael Vick Convicted of Federal Dogfighting Charges” ridiculous, but only because of the “federal” aspect. I’m a hard-core decentralist and so long as the jurisdictions are small enough and the costs of exit low enough, I think there’s room for moralism in local exercise of the police power. And banning abuse of animals is something I’d vote for at the local level.

This is also my position on abortion. I’ll admit it’s cowardly. And no, I can’t explain why I find dogfighting repulsive to the point where I think it ought to be criminal, but I do enjoy a cut of veal.

But I’ve never believed libertarianism has the answer to every moral conundrum. Clearly animals don’t have zero rights. And clearly they don’t enjoy the rights a 7-year-old does. When rights clash, as they appear to here, you have to start drawing lines. But do the drawing at as local a level as possible. Then let people live where the laws reflect their values.

One thing I will say that’s vaguely in Michael Vick’s defense: We have a constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy. Yes, I know there’s a legal distinction between a crime and the federal crime of engaging in a conspiracy to commit that crime. I just happen to think it’s ridiculous to all the two separate, prosecutable crimes. Vick’s about to be sentenced on federal charges that he conspired to break laws against dogfighitng. And now Virginia prosecutors are making noise about prosecuting him for actually the violation of those laws. Not sure how we got to the point where that’s not considered prosecuting him twice for the same series of crimes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.