Lawsuits Seek To Turn Chimpanzees Into Legal Persons

sciencehabit writes "This morning, an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a lawsuit in a New York court in an attempt to get a judge to declare that chimpanzees are legal persons and should be freed from captivity. The suit is the first of three to be filed in three New York counties this week. They target two research chimps at Stony Brook University and two chimps on private property, and are the opening salvo in a coordinated effort to grant 'legal personhood' to a variety of animals across the United States. If NhRP is successful in New York, it would upend millennia of law defining animals as property and could set off a 'chain reaction' that could bleed over to other jurisdictions, says Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and a prominent critic of animal rights. 'But if they lose it could be a giant step backward for the movement. They're playing with fire.'"

Comments

Only temporary

[Travis Mansbridge]

If freed, chimpanzees would be unable to follow basic laws and would likely need to be locked up in imprisonment anyway.

Re:Only temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps but it would open up all other kinds of questions about things like the buying and selling of the animal (slavery), using the animals in entertainment settings or medical testing without concent.

Laws prohibiting cruelty to animals should be sufficient to prevent any problems for the situations you mention.

Rights have no meaning without responsibilities; animal rights are a contradiction in terms.

A bigger risk

[naoursla]

This decision will also be used precedence by the machines to decide how humans should be treated post-singularity. Choose wisely.

Re:Hmmm...

[phantomfive]

Corporations aren't people. You can realize this when you think that a corporation is not allowed the right to vote. Corporate personhood is just a legal shorthand for talking about the collective rights of the individuals that make up the corporation.

The concept has been perverted by activists who hear the word 'personhood' and think they understand what it means without even bothering to read wikipedia. These are the people of which Churchill said, "the best argument against democracy is a 2 minute conversation with the typical voter." They can't think to educate themselves, they'd prefer to be outraged.

Won't fly

[DaveAtFraud]

There is a much better argument that a fetus is a person and deserves protection under the law but the anti-abortion types haven't managed to get that idea recognized by the courts or enacted as law through the ballot box. I don't agree with their argument or what the anti-abortion types are trying to do by making it but I can still see some validity to their argument. Given that the courts have considered whether a fetus is a person from the moment of conception and said "no", I don't see the courts granting "personhood" to chimpanzees.

O/T: This does give rise to an amusing situation. The folks who push "personhood" for a fetus would probably vehemently oppose granting the same designation to a chimpanzee (fundamentalists see man as on a whole different level than other animals). Likewise, the people pushing personhood for chimps would be some of the more liberal types and would probably be very "pro-choice".

Cheers,
Dave