Which Beings Should Be Entitled to Human Rights?

Abstract

This essay argues that genetic engineering techniques such as interspecies cloning will anew raise the question of who deserves the status of being a subject of the law. When domestic constitutions and international treaties use the terms ‘everyone,’ ‘no one,’ ‘person’ and ‘men and women’ they meant ‘human beings’. Does the discussion to date on the status of the unborn provide guidance on the question of whether beings that do not belong to the species Homo sapiens could be included among those who earn the right to be recognised by law as persons? What are the characteristics that we see as being typically human? The author comes to the conclusion that the decisive characteristic is the capacity to act for normative reasons, including moral reasons and that the term moral agent or person in a legal sense should be given a definition that is ‘interspeciesistic’.