John Hadley (born 27 September 1966) is an Australian philosopher whose research concerns moral and political philosophy, including animal ethics, environmental ethics, and metaethics. He spent much of his career at Western Sydney University, where he was a senior lecturer in philosophy, but also taught at Charles Sturt University and the University of Sydney, where he studied as an undergraduate and doctoral candidate. In addition to a variety of articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, he is the author of the 2015 monograph Animal Property Rights (Lexington Books) and the 2019 monograph Animal Neopragmatism (Palgrave Macmillan). He is also the co-editor, with Elisa Aaltola, of the 2015 collection Animal Ethics and Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield International).
Hadley is known for his account of animal property rights theory. He proposes that wild animals be offered property rights over their territories, and that guardians be appointed to represent their interests in decision-making procedures. He suggests that this account could be justified directly, on the basis of the interests of the animals concerned, or indirectly, so that natural environments are protected. The theory has received discussion in popular and academic contexts, with critical responses from farming groups and mixed responses from moral and political theorists.
Other work has included a defence of a neopragmatist approach to animal ethics, along with criticism of the metaethical and metaphilosophical assumptions of mainstream animal ethicists. Hadley has also conducted research on normative issues related to animal rights extremism, the aiding of others, and utilitarianism.
Career Hadley read for a Bachelor of Arts and doctorate in philosophy at the University of Sydney (USYD). His doctoral thesis was supervised by Caroline West,Hadley, Animal Property Rights, p. xi in USYD's Department of Philosophy, and was submitted in 2006 under the title of Animal Property: Reconciling Ecological Communitarianism and Species-egalitarian Liberalism. During his doctoral research, the "basic elements" of his animal property rights theory were "first assembled", leading to the publication of "Nonhuman Animal Property: Reconciling Environmentalism and Animal Rights" in the Journal of Social Philosophy. During this time, he also published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, and the Journal of Applied Philosophy, as well as working as a lecturer in the USYD philosophy department and a guest lecturer for the USYD Laboratory Animal Services.
After his PhD, Hadley worked as a lecturer in communication ethics in the Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Communication and a lecturer in philosophy at the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He then joined the University of Western Sydney School of Humanities and Communication Arts, first as a lecturer in philosophy, and then as a senior lecturer in philosophy. Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy, a collection edited by Hadley with the Finnish philosopher Elisa Aaltola, was published in 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield International. The book aimed to move debate in animal ethics beyond developing extensionist accounts and to examine the metaphilosophical and metaethical problems with extensionist accounts. Hadley's own contribution drew attention to a perceived inconsistent triad in animal rights philosophy: the idea that moral status is determined by psychological factors (like sentience), and not species; that human and nonhuman animals are of the same kind; and that genomic plasticity offers the best explanation for change in natural selection. In the same year, Hadley published a monograph with Lexington Books entitled Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals. The book, partially building upon his doctoral research, presents a large amount of new material on Hadley's animal property rights theory. A second monograph, Animal Neopragmatism, was published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan. This presented a neopragmatist approach to animal ethics.Hadley, John (2019). Animal Neopragmatism. Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. By 2026, Hadley had left Western Sydney University.
Research
Animal property rights
Hadley is known for his theory of animal property rights, according to which animals should be afforded property rights over their territory.Cochrane, Animal Rights Without Liberation, 163-4 Hadley has developed his theory of animal property rights through his doctoral research,Hadley, John (2006). Animal Property: Reconciling Ecological Communitarianism and Species-egalitarian Liberalism (PhD thesis) his 2015 monograph,Hadley, Animal Property Rights and other academic works. In addition, he has authored popular articles on the subject for The Guardian, The Conversation and The Ethics Centre. He also discussed the topic on Knowing Animals, a podcast series produced by Siobhan O'Sullivan. His proposal has received attention in the popular press, with strong criticism from farmers' groups and journalists writing on rural affairs.See:
The practical side of Hadley's proposal rests on two key principles: a guardianship system, according to which knowledgeable guardians would be appointed to represent animal property holders in land management decision-making, and the use of animals' territory-marking behaviour to determine the limits of their property.Hadley, Animal Property Rights, chap. 2 Hadley rejects first occupancy and labour-mixing accounts of appropriation,Hadley, Animal Property Rights, chap. 3 and instead suggests that there are two ways that his account might fruitfully be justified. First, it might be justified directly, with reference to the interests of animals. This relies upon the fact that wild animals require their territory in order to satisfy their basic needs and the claim that this results in an interest in territory strong enough to ground a right. If animals have a right to use their territory, Hadley claims, then they necessarily have a property right in that territory.Hadley, Animal Property Rights, chap. 4 Second, it might be justified indirectly, as animals (of some species, at least) might be given property rights as a means of protecting natural environments.Hadley, Animal Property Rights, chap. 5 Hadley presents his proposal against the backdrop of an explicit pragmatism,Hadley, Animal Property Rights, chap. 6 and holds that animal property rights theory has the potential to reconcile animal and environmental ethics.
Hadley's proposal has been placed in the context of the "political turn" in animal ethics; the emergence of animal ethics literature focused on justice. Another academic who has proposed that wild animals be afforded property rights over their habitats is the British philosopher Steve Cooke. Like Hadley, he utilises an interest-based account of animal rights, but, unlike Hadley, he suggests that sovereignty would be an appropriate tool to protect animals' interest in their habitat if property fails. Other theorists exploring the normative aspects of human relationships with wild animals explicitly deny that they are extending property rights to animals. The US-based ethicist Clare Palmer, for instance, argues for a duty to respect wild animals' space, but claims that arguing for a property right for these animals would be "difficult", and instead bases her account on the fact that human actions can make animals "painful, miserable and vulnerable".
The Canadian theorists Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka are critical of Hadley's proposal to extend property rights to animals, claiming that property rights are insufficient to protect animals' interests. Instead, they argue that animals should be considered sovereign over their territories.Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis, chap. 6 They write that
It is one thing to say that a bird has a property right in its nest, or that a wolf has a property right in its den – specific bits of territory used exclusively by one animal family. But the habitat that animals need to survive extends far beyond such specific and exclusive bits of territory – animals often need to fly or roam over vast territories shared by many other animals. Protecting a bird's nest is of little help if the nearby watering holes are polluted, or if tall buildings block its flight path. It's not clear how ideas of property rights can help here.Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis, 160
They also compare the possibility of extending property rights to animals to the approach of European colonists, who were prepared to extend property, but not sovereignty, rights to native peoples, resulting in oppression.Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis, 178. Hadley, however, is himself critical of Donaldson and Kymlicka's sovereignty proposal,Hadley, Animal Property Rights, 83–97 though the British philosopher Josh Milburn suggests that the proposals may not be as far apart as the authors indicate.Milburn, Josh (2016). "Nonhuman animals and sovereignty: On Zoopolis, failed states and institutional relationships with free-living animals". In: Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade, Intervention or Protest. Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press.
The British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane also questions the extension of property rights to animals in his Animal Rights Without Liberation. Though describing Hadley's proposal as "ingenious",Cochrane, Animal Rights Without Liberation, 163 he criticises it on two grounds. First, he questions Hadley's claim of a relationship between property and basic needs, and, second, denies that animal property rights would appease environmentalists, given that they would allow the destruction of environments which do not contain sentient animals.Cochrane, Animal Rights Without Liberation, 164 However, in his Sentientist Politics, Cochrane includes animal property rights as part of his critique of Donaldson and Kymlicka's sovereignty model, writing that it "seems perfectly possible to argue, as John Hadley and others have, that wild animals ought to be granted habitat or property rights over their territories".Cochrane, Alasdair (2018). Sentientist Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 81. In a book review, Milburn stresses the significance of Hadley's theory, but questions the extent to which the implementation of animal property rights would be desirable without the achievement of other animal rights and the extent to which Hadley's account is genuinely about property rights.
Animal neopragmatism