Andrew Jensen Kerr (Georgetown University Law Center) has posted Coercing Friendship and the Problem with Human Rights (University of San Francisco Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
I argue in this short essay that the foundational language of "dignity" in international human rights doctrine obscures the actual construction of human rights and limits high-functioning animals from our moral community. This lexicon of dignity lacks discrete content, but it has been almost uniformly interpreted to signal something “unique” about humans or the human condition. Indeed, the trending People ex rel. Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. v. Lavery appellate decision from New York State reflects how a narrow vision of rights jurisprudence determines practical life outcomes for animals like Tommy (a chimpanzee). I use the prism of friendship to explore how the (awkward) provision of essential emotional goods might subvert reader expectations of how we think about legal distinctions between humans and other animals. The motivating question that informs this essay is thus: should there be a positive right to friendship?