More-Than-Human Rights

More-than-human rights has emerged as part of the broader ecocentric turn in law. Borrowing from David Abram’s work on the “more-than-human,” more-than-human (MOTH) rights locates human rights within a broader landscape of concern for the rights and well-being of the living world. In doing so, it builds off the rights of nature but also constitutes an evolution in two dimensions. First, by making use of the term “more-than-human,” MOTH rights moves beyond the nature-culture binary implied by the linguistic dichotomy established between human rights and rights of nature. Second, substantively, by locating human rights squarely within the ambit of rights for the larger living world, more-than-human rights bridges human rights, animal rights, and nature rights, creating a legal paradigm which exceeds the sum of these parts.