Rights for Whales?

Paola Cavalieri on the essay "Whales: Their Emerging Right to Life", Anthony D'Amato and Sudhir K. Chopra, American Journal of International Law 85 (1), 1991.

The idea of having an entitlement includes a notion of a moral right that can inform existing law or push it in a certain direction. D'Amato and Chopra elucidate this point by stressing that, in a legal context, when a court accepts the moral claim of right and recognises it as somehow subsisting in the common law all along, though legal precedent was to the contrary, it is said that the court "articulates" the preexisting right. Along these lines, an international court could articulate a right to life of whales arising from the customary law practice of their preservation. When the final stage of an entitlement - that is, of a legally enforceable right - to life for whales results from progression through the previous stages, coupled with a sense that further development is inevitable because it is morally legitimate, such entitlement is already implicit, in a fundamental sense, in international law.

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