GARRETT M. BROAD: ‘U.S. law treats humans as the only animals considered “legal persons” capable of having rights. It designates all wild and domesticated animals, by contrast, as “legal things.” Pets and farmed animals alike are a form of property – by definition, they have no rights of their own. There has been considerable legal and philosophical debate on this topic…
To gauge public sentiment on this question, I worked with Qualtrics, a market research and survey company, to poll 1,044 Americans. These people were nationally representative in terms of their age, race and ethnicity, gender, income and region. The survey had a 3 percent margin of error…
About nine in 10 Americans, according to my survey, support some form of legal rights for animals. Nearly half believe that animals deserve the exact same rights as people. Only about 5.5 percent said they thought animals need little to no legal protection at all. This survey is only the latest indication that support for the rights of animals is strong.
A 2015 Gallup poll, for instance, found that about one in three Americans believed animals should be given the same rights as people, up from one in four in 2008. Both times, Gallup found that only 3 percent supported largely denying animals any rights at all’. SOURCE…
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