Shortcuts in the Animal Rights Discussion On the Question of the Legal Personality of Animals from an ethical Point of View

Disappointed by the lack of pragmatic success of animal protection law animal protectionists assume that making animals hearer of rights would strengthen the effectiveness of animal protection. Being a bearer of rights implies to belong to the law category of persons instead of things. For this strategy they find intellectual support especially in the Great Ape-Project, mainly initiated by the animal liberationist Peter Singer. Since Singer's animal ethical approach claims to establish a "new ethics" "beyond humanism" the humanistic fundaments of ethics and law, especially the idea of universal human rights, are challenged. Instead of promoting, animals to persons and degrading humans to nothing but animals this paper suggests an integration of animals into ethics and law that considers both the ethical human-animal-difference as well as the empirical similarities between humans and non-human sentient beings.