Abstract

This highly recommended book explores the animal ethics debate from the perspective of Western political thought, offering the reader not only a survey but also the framework for an original interest-based theory of animal rights. Cochrane’s operating definition of justice is of limited use, and the author is perhaps too uncritical of the utility of employing justice as a means to protect the interests of animals. It is suggested, too, that an account of the political theory of animal rights can invoke profitably the debate between exponents of ideal and non-ideal theories of justice.