Chimpanzee "Personhood" Is Back In Court

sciencehabit writes Chimpanzees are back in court. Judges in New York State heard the first in a series of appeals attempting to grant "legal personhood" to the animals. The case is part of a larger effort by an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a variety of creatures—from research chimps to aquarium dolphins—from captivity. If the case is successful, it could grant personhood to chimps throughout the state.

Comments

Re:They'll have rights

[ClickOnThis]

1) Animals already have something resembling rights, in the form of animal cruelty laws; the question here is whether those rights should be expanded to include some of the things guaranteed to humans.

There is a spectrum of opinion on what "animal rights" means. At the very least, I think animal rights include the right not to suffer needlessly at the hand of humans. I doubt anyone would argue that is also a human right. So, continuing in that direction, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that many human rights can be accorded to animals also.

Arguably, what we humans call animal rights are really just human-law restrictions on our own behavior (and good ones IMHO.) However, I think it captures their intent to call them "rights" so I embrace the term.

2) Plenty of humans (children, or, as someone else pointed out, the handicapped) can't hold down jobs or feed themselves. Chimps and dolphins, on the other hand, typically are able to feed themselves. So what you're saying is, chimps and dolphins should have more rights than children and the disabled?

I don't think it's a question of "more" rights, just different ones, and with the qualifier I mentioned above that we're really talking about human laws, not animal rights. I would say that animals have their own innate sense of rights and justice, and what we think of as their rights is an idealized picture of our relationship with them.

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. -- Henry Beston

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Karmashock]

I'm not asking for academic citations, intellectual anal palyp. I'm asking for you to explain yourself clearly.

Being lazy and vague gives no one any opportunity to know what you're talking about or judge whether in fact you're making any sense.

You could be a total and complete moron or a total and complete genius... and because you were vague and lazy no one could tell the difference.

So here I come into your comment asking you nicely "hey, please be clear"... to which you respond "this isn't an academic paper with parenthetical references, so I don't even need to be coherent!"...

Which is just stupid.

Last chance... be clear or I have to make some rather obvious assumptions. Your choice.