Nonhuman animals as property holders: an exploration of the Lockean labour-mixing account

Recent proposals in political philosophy concerning nonhuman animals as property-holders - by John Hadley and Steve Cooke - have focused on the interests that nonhuman animals have in access to and use of their territories. The possibility that such rights might be grounded on the basis of a Lockean (that is, labour-mixing) account of property has been rejected. In this paper, I explore four criticisms of Lockean property rights for nonhuman animals - concerning self-ownership, initiative, exertion and the sufficiency of protection offered - concluding that Lockean property rights could be extended to nonhuman animals. I then suggest that Lockean property rights actually offer advantages over interest-based accounts: they more clearly ground property, they are potentially broader, and they are considerably stronger.