James Webster Rachels (May 30, 1941 – September 5, 2003) was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics and animal rights.

He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,[1] studying under W. D. Falk and E. M. Adams.

As a teenager, he won a national speech contest that enabled him to appear on American Bandstand and to meet John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.

Later in his career, Rachels realized that a lifetime of analysing specific moral issues had led him to adopt the general ethic of utilitarianism, according to which actions are assessed by their effects on both human and nonhuman happiness.

In 1975, Rachels wrote "Active and Passive Euthanasia", which originally appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, and argued that the distinction so important in the law between killing and letting die (often based on the principle of double effect) has no rational basis.

Rachels proposed what he called the basic argument for vegetarianism which he believed is supported by a simple principle that every decent person accepts: it is wrong to cause pain unless there is a good enough reason.

[9] Rachels stated that "from a practical standpoint, it makes sense to focus first on the things that cause the most misery".