This chapter outlines how the Principle of Multispecies Legality offers solutions to the barriers to legal inclusion facing animals in both criminal and civil law contexts: by enabling animals to take legal action; by ensuring that, in civil suits, harms to animals are taken seriously and benefits are awarded to the animals themselves; and that defences of ‘necessity’ in animal welfare laws only apply when the otherwise harmful action is taken for the ultimate benefit of the animal him- or herself. The chapter then explores four institutional safeguards needed to ensure the PML is effective: that legislation is developed under the principle of anticipatory accommodation; that there is the establishment of independent offices of animal welfare; that there is the establishment of dedicated animal crime units and public prosecutors; and that there is equal access to legal services to ensure that all humans who seek to assist animals in taking legal action can do so, regardless of their financial circumstances. Finally, the chapter considers how we need to learn to recognise more expansive conceptions of (political) communication and learn how to be more receptive to them.

This chapter presents an alternative to legal personhood and the rights of nature as the means to better include animals within the scope of legal justice. It offers the Principle of Multispecies Legality as not merely an account of animals’ legal subjectivity but of the legal subjectivity of all those beings and entities that have – or that we might, as a democratic society, choose to recognise as having – interests. The PML holds that interests-bearing entitles one to recognition as a subject of the law, with the capacity to take legal action and have one’s interests considered impartially. In rejecting sentience as the grounds of animals’ politico-legal inclusion, the PML’s account of legal subjectivity provides for animals alongside existing sentient and non-sentient legal subjects, like humans and corporations. It also leaves the door open for other valuable entities that currently lack legal subjecthood, such as plants, fungi, bodies of water, and ecosystems. The chapter argues that the inclusivity of the PML is beneficial not only for animals and other non-human entities but also for those humans whose legal subjectivity remains tenuous under existing personhood paradigms.

This chapter seeks to strengthen the account of the Principle of Multispecies Legality offered in the previous chapter by responding to potential queries and concerns around the proposal’s structure, scope, and feasibility. The outlined concerns are as follows: that the PML is an attempt to redefine legal personhood; that a focus on interests is too inclusive, in that in opening the doors of legal inclusion to a relatively wide range of beings and entities it would put undesirable constraints on human activity; that a focus on interests is too limited in that it doesn’t capture the full scope of animals’ capabilities; that the PML will result in the equal treatment of humans and all other animals; that we shouldn’t base a being’s worth on their possession of a particular characteristic; and that the PML will be too unfeasible to implement.

The concluding chapter reiterates the goal of the book: to offer a solution to animals’ lack of legal inclusion by offering a new foundation of legal subjectivity. The Principle of Multispecies Legality provides such a foundation for animals and, indeed, all those beings and entities with interests. By contrast with the present paradigm of legal personhood, the PML is not premised on a vision of the ‘archetypal’ human which serves to exclude not only animals but also many vulnerable human groups. The PML is also an improvement over the rights of nature, in that it more straightforwardly recognises the interests and worth of individual animals and does not maintain the ontological barrier between humans and all other nature. Finally, we are reminded that making change takes a multispecies village: that the PML is only as good as those who are willing to implement it. In order to ensure real change for animals and other interested beings, we need to work to encourage greater respect for the non-human world.

This chapter introduces several examples from the Australian state of New South Wales that highlight the various institutional barriers in the way of legal redress that currently face animals who are subject to cruel treatment. These examples highlight how apparent animal abuse often goes un-investigated and unprosecuted, and how those who seek to help abused or neglected animals may themselves be threatened with legal penalties. The chapter then addresses the question of why, from the perspective of political justice, we should care about this state of affairs and why, therefore, we might be obligated to seek institutional reform on behalf of the other animals that form a part of our multispecies community. We are, finally, introduced to the book’s proposed Principle of Multispecies Legality, which aims to provide a foundation for the legal subjectivity of animals and all those beings and entities that have interests.