Francione graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Rochester, where he was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa O'Hearn Scholarship, allowing him to pursue graduate study in philosophy in the UK. He received his M.A. in philosophy and his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was articles editor of the Virginia Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Albert Tate, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court.

After practising law at the New York firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1984 and received tenure in 1987. He began to teach animal rights theory as part of his course in jurisprudence in 1985. In 1989, he joined the Rutgers faculty, and in 1990, he and his colleague Anna E. Charlton started the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Project, in which law students were awarded academic credit for working on actual cases involving animals. Francione and Charlton closed the clinic in 2000, but continue to teach courses in animal rights theory, animals and the law, and human rights and animal rights. Francione also teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and legal philosophy.

Property status of animals

In Animals, Property, and the Law (1995), Francione argues that because animals are the property of humans, laws that supposedly require their “humane” treatment and prohibit the infliction of “unnecessary” harm do not provide any significant level of protection for animal interests. For the most part, these laws and regulations require only that animals receive that level of protection that is required for their use as human property. Animals only have value as commodities and their interests do not matter in any moral sense. As a result, despite having laws that supposedly protect animals, Francione contends that we treat animals in ways that would be regarded as torture if humans were involved. Lastly, Francione states that we could provide greater protection to animals even if they remain our property, but legal, social, and economic forces militate strongly against recognizing animal interests unless there is an economic benefit for humans.

Comparison of animal rights and animal welfare

In Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996), Francione argues that there are significant theoretical and practical differences between animal rights, which he maintains requires the abolition of animal exploitation, and animal welfare, which seeks to regulate exploitation to make it more humane. Francione contends that the theoretical difference between these two approaches is obvious. The abolitionist position is that we cannot justify our use of nonhumans however “humanely” we treat animals; the regulationist position is that animal use is justifiable and that only issues of treatment are relevant.

Francione describes as “new welfarists” those who claim to support animal rights, but who support animal welfare regulation as the primary way to achieve incremental recognition of the inherent value of nonhumans. He argues that there is no factual support for this position because not only do regulations seldom if ever go beyond treating animals as economic commodities with only extrinsic value, but the perception that regulation has improved the “humane” treatment of animals may very well facilitate continued and increased exploitation by making the public feel more comfortable about its consumption of animal products.

A central tenet of Francione’s philosophy is that the most important form of incremental change within the abolitionist framework is veganism. Francione has also long argued that the animal rights movement is the logical extension of the peace movement and should embrace a non-violent approach. He maintains that an abolitionist/vegan movement is truly radical and that violence is reactionary.

Relevance of sentience

In his Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (2000), Francione argues that a theory of abolition should not require that animals have any cognitive characteristic beyond sentience to be full members of the moral community, entitled to the basic, pre-legal right not to be the property of humans. He rejects the position that animals have to have humanlike cognitive characteristics, such as reflective self-awareness, language ability, or preference autonomy in order to have the right not to be used as human resources. Francione derives this right from the principle of equal consideration in that he maintains that if animals are property, their interests can never receive equal consideration.

As part of this discussion, Francione identifies what he calls our “moral schizophrenia” when it comes to nonhumans. On the one hand, we say that we take animal interests seriously. Francione points to the fact that many of us even live with nonhuman companions whom we regard as members of our families and whose personhood...their status as beings with intrinsic moral value...we do not doubt for a second. On the other hand, because animals are property, they remain things that have no value other than what we choose to accord them and whose interests we protect only when it provides a benefit...usually economic...to do so. According to Francione, if animals are going to matter morally and not be things, we cannot treat them as property.

Animal rights movement

Francione’s position differs significantly from that of Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation (1975). Singer, who is a utilitarian, rejects moral rights as a general matter and regards sentience as sufficient for moral status. Singer maintains that some animals do not care about whether we kill them and use them for our purposes, but care only about how we treat them when we do use and kill them. Therefore, animal use in itself does not raise a moral problem for Singer. In Francione’s view, the fact that a being is sentient necessarily means that the being has an interest in continued existence and he rejects the view that animals do not have an interest in whether we use them but only in how we use them.

Francione’s approach also differs from that of Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights (1983). Regan proposes an abolitionist theory but limits it to animals that have cognitive characteristics that go beyond sentience alone. Moreover, although Regan maintains that there is no acceptable way to distinguish between humans and animals for purposes of treating animals exclusively as means to human ends, he maintains that death is always a greater harm for humans than for nonhumans. According to Francione, although Regan distances himself from Singer’s position, this aspect of his theory is uncomfortably close to Singer’s view that death in itself is not a harm for most nonhumans. If Regan is correct, then there is a qualitative distinction between humans and animals that can serve as a way of distinguishing between them for moral purposes. Francione maintains that Regan, like Singer, is wrong in this respect. Francione argues that we may not understand what death means to a nonhuman, but that is a matter of our epistemological limitations. Our inability to understand the meaning of death to nonhumans does not mean that a sentient nonhuman has no interest in continued existence.

Francione’s theory of animal rights, particularly his views on animal welfare, is criticized by some sections of the animal protection movement, who argue that animal welfare does provide meaningful protection for animal interests. Moreover, many within the animal protection community maintain that certain animals, such as the great apes or dolphins, ought to receive greater protection based only on their cognitive similarity to humans—the so-called "similar minds position"—a position Francione has opposed:

I certainly agree that it is wrong to use nonhuman great apes in research or in circuses, or to confine them in zoos, or to use them for any other purpose. But I reject what I call the "similar minds" position that links the moral status of nonhumans to their possession of humanlike cognitive characteristics. The exploitation of the nonhuman great apes is immoral for the same reason that is immoral to exploit the hundreds of millions of mice and rats who are routinely exploited in laboratories or the billions of nonhumans who we kill and eat: the nonhuman great apes and all of these other nonhumans are, like us, sentient. They are conscious; they are subjectively aware; they have interests; they can suffer. No characteristic other than sentience is required for personhood."