Nonhuman Animals as Property Holders: An Exploration of the Lockean Labour-Mixing Account

Abstract

Recent proposals in political philosophy concerning nonhuman animals as property-holders – by John Hadley and Steve Cooke – have focused on the interests that nonhuman animals have in access to and use of their territories. The possibility that such rights might be grounded on the basis of a Lockean (that is, labour-mixing) account of property has been rejected. In this paper, I explore four criticisms of Lockean property rights for nonhuman animals – concerning self-ownership, initiative, exertion and the sufficiency of protection offered – concluding that Lockean property rights could be extended to nonhuman animals. I then suggest that Lockean property rights actually offer advantages over interest-based accounts: they more clearly ground property, they are potentially broader, and they are considerably stronger.