Moral Status of Animals in The Ancient World - Concept of "ius"

Concept of "ius"

Further information: Natural law, Natural rights, and Roman law#Concepts

Legal philosopher John Finnis writes that the Romans gave us the concept of "ius", meaning what is right, just, or lawful, and it is from this concept that the idea of a "right" as a claim, an entitlement, an immunity, or a liberty, arose in the late-medieval to modern period. He writes that it remains unclear how the concept of ius developed into the idea of modern rights, but a key feature of the latter is that the relationship between persons is articulated from the perspective of the relationship's beneficiary, the holder of the right. This is an important idea in the development of the concept of animal rights, the essence of which is to view the relationship between human and non-human from the perspective of the animal as beneficiary, rather than from the perspective of the human, which is how most animal protection legislation is framed. The idea is that any wrong not only "deforms the agent," as Finnis writes of human beings, but also offends the victim's "fundamental equality."