By Julia Asay
Animal rights activists
protect animals against cruelty and suffering, and defend the idea that animals
should be entitled to their own lives. However, in the United States, animals
are classified as ‘legal things’, which makes it harder to protect them, and
gives more liberties to human beings to abuse them. One man is making history
by filing a law suit on behalf of four captive chimpanzees, that if won would
for the first time particular animals would be given legal rights. Steven Wise,
a lawyer who has fought for animal rights for the past 30 years, founded the
Nonhuman Rights Project with the intent of protecting animals, specifically
chimpanzees across the country. Currently, while awaiting the results of one of
his trials, I was given the incredible opportunity to interview him.
To fully understand the legal
suit, one has to differentiate between humans and legal persons as being
different, as even fetuses, corporations, and ships have been established as
‘legal persons’. So then what is the difference between a ‘legal person’ and a
‘legal thing’? Wise explains, “What I see is this kind of thick, legal wall
that separates things from persons. So on one side are legal things, and on
another are legal persons. And if you’re a legal thing, you are invisible to
courts, you don’t have the capacity for rights, you don’t have any rights.
You’re essentially a slave for the legal person. If you’re a person you are
visible to courts, you have the capacity for rights, you have many rights, and
you’re the master of the slaves.” Though, it may sound improbable, it was only
during the 20th century that women and children became recognized as
‘legal persons’, so these court cases may in fact be feasible.
The current cases taking
place in New York, surround four chimpanzees by the names of Tommy, Kiko,
Hercules, and Leo. Tommy and Kiko are both privately owned chimpanzees, while
Hercules and Leo are owned by New Iberia Research Center and are rented to
Stony Brook University which uses them for research purposes.
Wise is using the writ of
Habeus Corpus as the basis of the suit, which is used in law to determine
whether an individual is being legally detained. All three petitions for writs
of Habeus Corpus have been denied, but have also been re-filed by Wise and his
legal team. Hercules and Leo’s case may be the most promising, as Manhattan
Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe issued an Order to Show Cause, requiring a
representative of Stony Brooke University to appear in court to justify the
captivity of these chimps. Currently, Wise is awaiting Judge Jaffe’s decision,
which may come out as early as this week.
The Nonhuman Rights Project
works with renowned scientists around the world who have found, based off of
genetics, intelligence, and behavioral analysis, that nonhuman animals,
specifically apes, dolphins and elephants, are conscious, autonomous beings.
These animals have memories, they feel emotions, they have social hierarchies,
and they are even capable of using tools. Yet, humans cage them, and use them
for whatever purposes we need no matter the physical or emotional toll it takes
on the animal.
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| (Picture provided by the Nonhuman Rights Project Website) |
This is a huge step for
animal rights, and could potentially open the flood-gates to allowing more animals
to gain legal rights, and therefore give harsher punishments to those who
violate them. For now the future is still unknown, but Wise remains hopeful,
“Whenever we win, then we have to look at why we won, which animal won, and
what cause of action won – how broad the decision was. And then we begin to try
to widen that to expand the number of animals, to expand the number of rights.
And once we begin doing that we have no doubt that others, you know, all over
the country, all over the world will begin to jump in and file their own
lawsuits as well… and that legislatures are going to start being involved as
well. And so it’s just going to kind of open up the area to a reevaluation so
that judges and others no longer say well if you’re human, you’re a person, you
have rights, and if you’re not a person you don’t have rights.”
If the suit is won, Wise
plans to have the chimpanzees relocated to a sanctuary in Ft. Pierce, Florida,
called Save the Chimps, where they will reside with 250 other chimpanzees in an
environment similar to their natural habitats in Africa. It is a place that
will provide these animals sanctuary from the captive lives they have lived as
possessions of human beings, and bring hope towards future court cases
surrounding animal rights.
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