Treating animals as ‘things' creates a legal contradiction

This article argues that Australian animal law creates a formal contradiction, where non-human animals are both rights-holders and not rights-holders. While animals are ‘things’ and therefore necessarily cannot have rights, they are also granted non-instrumental protection of their bodily integrity by the law that amounts to an interest-based right. I contend that a unique property status for animals is an insufficient resolution for the contradiction and propose that the path forward should be the abolition of animal ‘thinghood’.