The current legal systems worldwide operate on a binary distinction between "persons" with rights and "things" that can be owned. This creates a significant gap in protecting entities capable of experiencing harm—such as sentient animals, potential future conscious AIs, or ecosystems that might exhibit distributed consciousness. Without a framework to recognize and protect these forms of sentience, systemic suffering and ethical risks persist.

A New Approach to Rights Protection

One way to address this could be through a flexible legal and ethical framework centered on sentience—the capacity for subjective experience—rather than species or origin. This approach would involve:

• Creating tiered protection levels based on scientifically assessed degrees of sentience
• Developing institutions to evaluate sentience claims and mediate conflicts between different sentient groups
• Building mechanisms for periodic updates as our understanding of consciousness evolves

For example, highly sentient animals might receive stronger protections than simpler organisms, while advanced AI systems could gain rights proportionate to their demonstrated consciousness.

Implementation Pathways

The framework could be developed through three progressive phases:

1. Academic consensus: Bringing together neuroscientists, AI researchers, ethicists, and legal scholars to establish reliable sentience assessment methods
2. Legal prototypes: Creating adaptable legislation templates, initially focusing on non-human animals where sentience is well-established
3. Institutional development: Forming specialized courts and advocacy systems to represent non-human interests

Early efforts might concentrate on less controversial cases, like protecting cephalopods, to demonstrate the framework's viability before addressing more complex scenarios like AI rights.

Distinct Advantages

This approach differs from existing models in several key ways. Unlike animal welfare laws that focus on utility to humans, it would protect all sentient beings without arbitrary exclusions. Compared to voluntary AI ethics guidelines, it would offer enforceable protections. And unlike projects that extend human-like rights to specific species, it wouldn't require human-like cognition—just demonstrable capacity for experience.

By shifting from anthropocentric legal traditions to a sentience-based system, this framework could adapt to new scientific understandings and technological developments while reducing preventable suffering across many forms of life.