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3 Animal L. 45 (1997)
Thunder without Rain: A Review/Commentary of Gary L. Francione's Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement

handle is hein.journals/anim3 and id is 55 raw text is: THUNDER WITHOUT RAIN: A REVIEW/COMMENTARY OF GARY L. FRANCIONE'S RAIN WITHOUT THUNDER: THE IDEOLOGY OF THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT By STEVEN M. WISE, ESQ.* Profound disagreement and rancor characterized the American aboli- tionist movement in the decades before the Civil War. The anti-slavery gradualists futilely hoped that slavery might ultimately disappear as a re- sult of various developments and tactics, while the immediatist abolition- ists had a compelling desire for immediate, complete, uncompensated emancipation.' In Rain Without Thunder: 7he Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement, Professor Gary L. Francione argues that the modern animal rights movement is similarly propelled. New Welfarists, he claims, fruitlessly pursue the goal of ending the exploitation of nonhuman animals through measures that better their welfare but cannot result in what matters most, the abolition of their legal status as property. In Francione's opinion, a structural defect inheres in the New Wel- farism that dooms the goal of abolition-its long and short term goals hopelessly conflict.2 Francione argues that two reasons exist. First, non- human animal welfare reform conceptualizes the human/animal conflict in ways that ensure that the animal interests never prevail.3 Second, it begs a fundamental moral question: if we believe that animals have moral rights today, it is wrong to compromise the rights of animals now.4 For example, Francione argues that it is wrong to pursue or support legal changes that facilitate supposedly more 'humane' experimentation in the hope that these changes will lead to rights for other animals sometime in * President of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, Inc. of Needham, Massachusetts. The purpose of the Center is to obtain fundamental legal rights for qualified nonhuman animals, beginning with chimpanzees and bonobos. President, Mise & Slater- Wise, Boston, Massachusetts. He has taught Animal Rights Law, as an Adjunct Professor at the Vermont Law School since 1990. As did Professor Francione, Attorney Wse served on the Board of Directors of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, on which Attorney Wise also served as President for ten years. 1 LAWRENCE J. FRiEDMAN, GREGARIOUS SAINTS - SELF AND Co,,muNrr IN A&zrcJAN AnEou- noNsm - 1830-1870 1 (1982). The analogy to the animal rights movement bears further study. 2 GARY L FRAcCIONrE, RAIN Wrmour THUNMER: TIM IDEOLOGY OF' THm A.' AL RIGTrrs MovmN'-r 3 (1996). 3 1 at4. 4 Id.

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