On the Road to Liberation: New Paper on Animal Law: Incrementalism versus Anti-Incrementalism

A few people have commented on the incrementalist nature of laws for blacks, women, and children. I decided to investigate this myself with more thoroughness. This is a history paper, so it is outside my area of expertise which is philosophy. Nevertheless, it has been a neglected area, so I thought I would try to do something anyway, and wait for some real history experts do more rigorous and elaborate work at some later date.

Here is a LINK

The paper tries to accomplish a number of things:

Come up with a new terminology for this debate: incrementalism versus anti-incrementalism, with reasons given assessing many choices for terminology
Showing that most forms of oppression could not possibly be based in an extended form of property status as Professor Gary L. Francione states
Providing an outline of the history of post-property-status legislation on behalf of African Americans, women, and children, and showing that it is ALL incrementalist legislation
Commenting on the sheer improbability, if not impossibility, that animal law will be nonincrementalist, unlike laws on behalf of humans;
Explaining why it is virtually impossible to go beyond incrementalism
Assessing the value of single-issue campaigns
Further addressing the complacency problem pegged onto incrementlist approaches
Outlining some key increments of animal laws that have already come to pass
The implications of accepting historical incrementalism for anti-cruelty laws...and more!

Bruce Friedrich writes and speaks widely on this topic on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He recently blogged in the Huffington Post on this debate, and linked to this essay of mine, calling it essential reading. See his article and the comments. Another commenter favorably referred to my "Animal Rights Law" essay and mentioned the incrementalist nature of progress for women's rights. HuffPo has been called the world's most influential blog site. This reference by Mr. Friedrich has resulted in an all-time high of page views, yesterday, on my website. Enjoy!

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation