Tomasz Pietrzykowski (University of Silesia) has posted Beyond Personhood: From Two Conceptions of Rights to Two Kinds of Right-Holders on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The debate between so called interest and will theories of rights is long and well known. I argue that it respect of legal rights it is plausible to claim that there are just two different kinds of normative situations created by rules of law. One of them corresponds to "Interest Rights" while the other to "Choice Rights". Moreover, there are essentially different conditions of plausible ascription of each of those kinds of rights. In view of that I suggest that two kinds of right-holders should be distinguished – creatures able to hold only elementary (interest) rights and those apt to possess personal (choice) rights too. The first category includes all sentient creatures (as non-personal subjects of law) while the other refers to beings possessing qualities of a person. However, extending the scope of legitimate right-holders should not result with any regress in the present level of legal protection enjoyed by human beings. In order to avoid risk of such regress I develop the idea of modestly specist approach to personhood applying different criteria of subjecthood and personhood to human and non-human creatures.