Blanket Legal Personhood: The Right to Life and Dignity of All Creatures

In almost all legal systems worldwide, animals are legally classified as property rather than legal persons. The current classification of animals as property fails to protect sentient beings from systemic cruelty and industrial exploitation. 

Blanket legal personhood for all animals proposes shifting animals from human property to beings with inherent legal rights. While it seeks to protect them from exploitation and cruelty, it faces enormous logistical hurdles, as applying human like civil rights globally would radically upend agriculture, medical research, and property laws. The industrial exploitation of animals represents the primary economic and systemic barrier to granting animals legal personhood. 

Advocates of the Personhood Movement argue that sentient beings require legal recognition to have rights protected. Just as the law has expanded to include marginalized human groups who where once considered property, proponents argue that personhood can and should apply to all animals as non-human legal persons.

This Conference examines how we can reconcile the mass industrial commodification of animals, with their recognized status as conscious, sentient beings, and their fundamental right to bodily integrity and freedom from suffering.