There a certain functions rights perform for us that rights cannot perform for animals: an authorizing function, a reaction-constraining function, an enabling function, a transactional function, a stabilizing function. These functions serve reciprocal relations between creatures
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having cognitive and motivational capacities that most animals patently lack, and which appear to be rudimentary at best even in the case of so-called “higher” animals. There are, however, other functions that rights serve that do not presuppose these capacities or relationships with humans requiring such capacities. One of these is a protective function. A collection of indirect duties can protect a variety of animal interests, but it cannot protect an interest in maintaining dignity. Another function rights perform is generative: sensitivity to another’s rights can lead to recognition of a range of duties that appear to be accessible in no other way. Rights, moreover, are more amenable to enforcement by proxy than indirect duties are. Finally, rights serve a fallback function, which comes into play when sympathy and affection waiver or fail. These functions indicate that rights would be good for animals to have. Whether animals have them or not, and what precisely they are if they do, is of course a further matter