The field of animal law is ubiquitously characterized as being split between proponents of ‘animal rights’ and ‘animal welfare.’ While rights advocates seek to end the legal classification of animals as ‘property’ (or pursue the related goal of establishing animals as legal ‘persons’), welfarists aim to improve animal lives within the property paradigm. The common wisdom that all legal approaches to animals are fundamentally split between rights and welfarism has worked to ossify categories of analysis and prevent more accurate and productive accounts of what truly divides and unites theorists within this increasingly diverse field. In place of this traditional assumption that one must be simply ‘for’ or ‘against’ the abolition of property status, I propose an alternative pair of axes around which we might more productively organize existing and future approaches to animal law. First, what do these various approaches take to be the linchpin of animals’ exploitation – the thing that, though central to the system, is changeable, such that, if changed, the whole system might change with it? Second, what do these approaches take to constitute the unchangeable bedrock of existing systems of animal exploitation – things that reform efforts must take as inevitable, for better or for worse? Changing our lens to focus on bedrock and linchpins invites more nuanced debate respecting the unique constellations of hope, despair, and pragmatism that in fact animate so much animal law scholarship. In a field characterized by transformative ambitions, the proposed analysis of linchpins and bedrock focuses our attention on differing accounts of change – what must change and what cannot.

中文翻译：

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关键和基石：动物法中的希望、绝望和实用主义

动物法领域的普遍特征是“动物权利”和“动物福利”的支持者之间存在分歧。虽然权利倡导者试图结束将动物归类为“财产”的法律分类（或追求将动物确立为合法“人”的相关目标），但福利主义者的目标是在财产范式内改善动物的生活。关于动物的所有法律方法从根本上分裂为权利和福利主义的普遍智慧已经使分析类别变得僵化，并阻止对这个日益多样化的领域中真正分裂和团结理论家的更准确和富有成效的解释。代替这种传统的假设，即一个人必须简单地“支持”或“反对”废除财产地位，我提出了另一对轴，我们可以围绕它更有效地组织现有和未来的动物法方法。首先，这些不同的方法是如何成为动物剥削的关键——虽然是系统的核心，但它是可变的，如果改变，整个系统可能会随之改变？其次，这些方法是如何构成现有动物剥削系统不可改变的基石的——改革努力必须将其视为不可避免的，无论好坏？改变我们的视角，专注于基石和关键因素，引发了关于希望、绝望和实用主义的独特星座的更微妙的辩论，这些星座实际上激发了如此多的动物法学术研究。在一个充满变革野心的领域，