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Legal Protection for Whales: Capabilities, Entitlements, and Culture

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Animals, Race, and Multiculturalism

Part of the book series: The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series ((PMAES))

Abstract

This chapter addresses the legal status of whales and argues that they should be regarded as creatures entitled to rights, not simply as commodities. We argue that intelligence and the ability to be social qualities that are at least as important as suffering. With this framework in mind, we then analyse the issues of using whales allegedly for the purposes of scientific research and for aboriginal subsistence and for cultural reasons. The issue then ultimately comes back to standing: Are whales person-like beings with legal entitlements, or are they not? At present, they are not, under customary international law. But the time has come to change this.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rachel Nussbaum Wichert and Martha C. Nussbaum, “The Legal Status of Whales and Dolphins: From Bentham to the Capabilities Approach,” forthcoming in Agency, Democracy, and Participation in Global Development, ed. Lori Keleher and Stacy J. Kosko (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

  2. 2.

    National Resources Defense Council et al.ii v. Pritzker, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, no. 14-16374, July 15, 2016.

  3. 3.

    See the related reflections on “wildlife sovereignty” in Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

  4. 4.

    Wichert, R. N. and Nussbaum, M. C. Scientific Whaling? The Scientific Research Exception and the Future of the International Whaling Commission, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 2017.

  5. 5.

    International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, December 2, 1946, available at http://iwc.int/iwcmain.

  6. 6.

    Alexander Gillespie, “Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling: A Critique of the Interrelationship Between International Law and the International Whaling Commission,” 12 Colorado Journal of Environmental Law and Policy 12 (2001), 77–139.

  7. 7.

    Id. at 94.

  8. 8.

    Alexander Gillespie, Whaling Diplomacy (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2005), 204.

  9. 9.

    Peter Stoett, The International Politics of Whaling (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997), 63.

  10. 10.

    Id. at 194.

  11. 11.

    Id. at 195.

  12. 12.

    International Whaling Commission, https://iwc.int/catches.

  13. 13.

    ICRW, above.

  14. 14.

    Howard S. Schiffman, “The International Whaling Commission: Challenges From Within and Without,” ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law 10 (2004) 367–375. See also Schiffman, “The Protection of Whales in International Law: A Perspective for the Next Century,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 22 (1996), 303–360.

  15. 15.

    IWC/64/Rep3, Agenda Item 7.

  16. 16.

    “Going to Greenland? Don’t Eat Whale Meat” available at http://us.whales.org/wdc-in-action/going-to-greenland-dont-eat-whale-meat. Norway has also sold whale meat at international trade fairs in violation of the law in most EU countries; see “Whale Meat Snacks Seized at German Trade Fair”, The Guardian, January 24, 2014.

  17. 17.

    ICRW, above.

  18. 18.

    Id.

  19. 19.

    “Greenland refused permission to increase ‘subsistence whaling’” available at http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/whaling-greenland.html.

  20. 20.

    Id.

  21. 21.

    IWC.

  22. 22.

    Adam Wesolowski, “Taking It Off the Table: A Critical View of Culture in the Whaling Debate,” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 20 (2013), 99–115.

  23. 23.

    Stoett, p. 113.

  24. 24.

    “Greenland Is Getting Ready to Stand Alone,” The Guardian, June 15, 2010.

  25. 25.

    Daniel Esty, Greening the GATT: Trade, Environment and the Future (Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 1994), 188.

  26. 26.

    Quoted in Gillespie, at 218–219.

  27. 27.

    Cited at http://us.whales.org/issues/aboriginal-subsistence-whaling.

  28. 28.

    Kirkpatrick Dorsey, Whales and Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), 244.

  29. 29.

    Quoted in Id. at 247.

  30. 30.

    Michael Chiropolos, “Inupiat Subsistence and the Bowhead Whale: Can Indigenous Hunting Cultures Coexist with Endangered Animal Species?,” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 5 (1994), 213–223.

  31. 31.

    Id. at 213.

  32. 32.

    Id. at 222.

  33. 33.

    570 F. 2d 950 (1978).

  34. 34.

    Id.

  35. 35.

    Id. at 957.

  36. 36.

    Id.

  37. 37.

    Id. at 223.

  38. 38.

    Gillespie, p. 103.

  39. 39.

    Id.

  40. 40.

    Id. at 105.

  41. 41.

    Id. at 110.

  42. 42.

    Stephen M. Hankins, “The United States’ Abuse of the Aboriginal Whaling Exception: A Contradiction in United States Policy and a Dangerous Precedent for the Whale,” University of California at Davis Law Review 24 (1990), 489–530.

  43. 43.

    Id. at 522.

  44. 44.

    Id. at 523.

  45. 45.

    Id. at 528.

  46. 46.

    Stoett, 118–119.

  47. 47.

    Id.

  48. 48.

    Id. at 118.

  49. 49.

    Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy 175–176 (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002), 175–176.

  50. 50.

    Id. at 176.

  51. 51.

    Id.

  52. 52.

    Id.

  53. 53.

    See Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), ch. 2, investigating all of the prominent contenders.

  54. 54.

    See the excellent treatment of this issue in Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism (New York and London: Routledge, 1997).

  55. 55.

    See Seyla Benhabib, “Cultural Complexity, Moral Independence, and the Global Dialogical Community,” in Women, Culture, and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 235–255.

  56. 56.

    One might compare the contention by communitarian political theorists Dan M. Kahan and Tracey L. Meares that the Fourth Amendment rights against unwarranted search and seizure should be waived whenever the local African-American community votes so to suspend them: for obviously enough such a vote includes only those who show up at the imagined meeting in the housing projects, and the voices of adolescent men are particularly unlikely to be heard. See their “When Rights are Wrong,” Boston Review April 1999.

  57. 57.

    See Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 1.

  58. 58.

    Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). 1958 is the date of the lecture from which the book’s title derives.

  59. 59.

    Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

  60. 60.

    See the argument to that effect in Frédérique Appfel Marglin, Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

  61. 61.

    See Walter Burkert, “Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966), 87–121.

  62. 62.

    See Elizabeth Anderson, “Animal Rights and the Value of Nonhuman Life,” in Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 277–298, at 295–296.

  63. 63.

    Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), at 11.

  64. 64.

    See Anthony D’Amato and Sudhir K. Chopra, “Whales: Their Emerging Right to Life,” American Journal of International Law 85 (1991) 21–62.

  65. 65.

    See the summary by D’Amato and Chopra, p. 58.

  66. 66.

    Nancy Doubleday, “Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling: The Right of Inuit to Hunt Whales and Implications for International Environmental Law,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 17 (1989), 373–394.

  67. 67.

    Id. at 378–379.

  68. 68.

    D’Amato and Chopra, p. 59.

  69. 69.

    See “Judge dismisses suit challenging Cook County ‘puppy mill’ ban,” Chicago Tribune August 12, 2015, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-puppy-mill-ban-met-20150810-story.html.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Government Affairs Attorney, Friends of Animals, Denver, CO, USA

    Rachel Nussbaum Wichert

  2. Law School and Philosophy Department, The University of Chicago, 1111 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Martha C. Nussbaum

Authors
  1. Rachel Nussbaum Wichert
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  2. Martha C. Nussbaum
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Correspondence to Rachel Nussbaum Wichert .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, South Africa

    Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues

  2. University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa

    Les Mitchell

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Wichert, R.N., Nussbaum, M.C. (2017). Legal Protection for Whales: Capabilities, Entitlements, and Culture. In: Cordeiro-Rodrigues, L., Mitchell, L. (eds) Animals, Race, and Multiculturalism . The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66568-9_5

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