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

Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BitterOak]

If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 poo sling for yes, 2 for no

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[TWX]

They'd make better people than corporations do...

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Marriage with humans? Thrown in jail for being naked? Arrested for underage sex? Forced admittance to the local public school?

I don't have a problem with smart animals getting more rights, but they shouldn't be considered persons. We need another class.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[phantomfive]

More importantly, would they vote Republican or Democrat?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Frosty Piss]

If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.

Most of the First Posts at Slashdot are posted by chimps...

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one is more likely to get them a banana republic?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[TheInternetGuy]

If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.

I don't think that they would necessary need to be declared legally competent persons, just because they were given personhood status. That being said, I think I agree with those who say that perhaps we need a new classification instead.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[kylemonger]

Thinking about Card's Hierarchy of Foreigness will give you an idea what these people are trying to accomplish.

http://ansible.wikia.com/wiki/...

They are basically trying to have chimps and dolphins reclassified as raman, not as humans, not as djur. Raman don't get citizen rights such as voting, but the non-state related parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ought to apply to them as persons.

http://www.un.org/en/documents...

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my thought. I think the corporate ruling is insane and compared to that this is super sensible.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you figure?

Humans (people!) run corporations.

Chimpanzees (not people!) run chimpanzees.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well shit, if we're going to use young adult science fiction as if they're authorities on this subject, I think we should declare the chimpanzees to be Muggles.

10 points, Gryffindor!

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[bondsbw]

Those who believe in the right to fling feces will vote Republican.

Dead chimps and chimps being bused in from other zoos will vote Democrat.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[TWX]

Chimpanzees will eventually die of their own natural causes. They end, and their effects on the world will end.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

If chimps are people, how long till Turing-test winning AI are people too?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[dasunt]

The law seems to fail here. We have the concept of "human", and the concept of "animal", but nothing between.

The great apes (excluding ourselves, of course), as well as some other species seem intelligent enough that we should consider them a special class of creature. Of course they lack human sophistication and intelligence, but they have the ability to think above and beyond most creatures. They seem to be able to crudely communicate using sign language (although they have great difficulty with grammar). They can pass a mirror self-recognition test. They are capable of tool use. If I had to hazard a human analogy, they are somewhat like a young human child, but lacking human's preprogrammed neural pathways for proper language.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[MightyMartian]

An individual can possess personhood without necessarily enjoying all the rights and privileges that are generically afforded to them. Criminals and the insane, for instance, are certainly persons, but may have many of the rights limited and some outright revoked. I can certainly see chimps or dolphins, both highly intelligent and clearly in possession of some level of sentience, deserving some level of protection that approaches those of humans. Maybe that does mean a different class of personhood, but I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to simply place these more advanced animals in the same category as cows or gerbils.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[arth1]

I think the right to personhood should be given to anyone who of their own volition can claim the right. And yes, that also means taking it away from many who have it today.
Including corporations.

I don't see any non-human lifeforms being able to claim that right. Future computers might, or genetically modified/engineered animals.

But I believe most animals should still have the protection of being sentient beings, much like we protect infants and retarded people.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[MightyMartian]

But the great apes, cetaceans and elephants do not possess even the rights of infants of the mentally incapacitated. They are protected via fairly limited and frequently ignored animal cruelty laws, but that's about it. There is no recognition of the sentience of these creatures, they receive no more protection than a hamster would.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Children, also

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Chelloveck]

I propose that we define a chimp as 3/5ths of a person. There's precedent, at least...

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[ColdWetDog]

I never thought that Howard the Duck was meant as an instruction manual, but who knows?

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long? Many political offices are already by chimps.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

The law seems to fail here. We have the concept of "human", and the concept of "animal", but nothing between.

Say what? The law certainly has in-betweens, for example: "juvenile", "intellectually disabled" ("mental retardation" until recently) and even "vegetative state". The law provides for different rights and punishments to members of such categories.

The great apes (excluding ourselves, of course), as well as some other species seem intelligent enough that we should consider them a special class of creature. Of course they lack human sophistication and intelligence, but they have the ability to think above and beyond most creatures. They seem to be able to crudely communicate using sign language (although they have great difficulty with grammar). They can pass a mirror self-recognition test. They are capable of tool use. If I had to hazard a human analogy, they are somewhat like a young human child, but lacking human's preprogrammed neural pathways for proper language.

"Vegetative state" is a great example for highlighting that cognitive intelligence has absolutely zero to do with whether a living being deserves protection under the law as anything more than "animal". The law and Descartes do not see eye to eye.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

What do you mean by that? Look, I understand the ruling on corporate personhood, but how would you change the law and what would that change in the law mean?

Specifically, what is happening that you dislike as a result of corporate personhood? I just want to understand where you are coming from here. Please be specific.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[ColdWetDog]

Why wouldn't we treat them as we (should) treat any animal? With respect for living conditions, pain control, anxiety, food, water and shelter? With that set of guidelines, they would be treated better than we treat most humans.

Certainly in many places, animal abuse is prosecuted with more vigor than human - human abuse.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[cashman73]

I would say they certainly can vote. After all, we've already had our nation's first Chimpanzee President.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[whoever57]

Criminals and the insane, for instance, are certainly persons, but may have many of the rights limited and some outright revoked

Or companies, which have most if not all of the rights of natural persons (except for the right to vote), and few of the responsibilities.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[davester666]

You most definitely do NOT want to be present for a filibuster.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[0123456]

So, when an ape kills another ape, will we be sending it to jail?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

> how would you change the law and what would that change in the law mean?

There's no 1 law. There's a number of laws, regulations and rulings that have characterized corporations. Start by dissolving the ability of a corporation to have liability. The liability is shared by the stockholders or executive officers, prior to stock issuance. Simplify corporate structures to a set of federally regulated organizations. Individual, Private, Public, and Charity (for example).

This is just to start. There are far too many laws and regulations to cover here and would all come with uncertainty (from a grain of salt to a black hole of worry). Asking about such an insidiously woven mat of legalities, is a little beyond the scope of the topic, and certainly would take more than a trite post about 1 segment of a gaping wound in the US socioeconomic system.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[gl4ss]

well usa regularly kills retarded persons who have killed some other person..

I think the second part of the animal rights group is to simply try to gain custodianhood of the chimp-persons after getting them declared as persons. clearly they're not wanting the chimps to have any of the responsibilities of even mentally challenged people.

maybe they plan to run a chimp sanitarium and bill the state for the patients.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

A chimpanzee is already president, so there's your answer.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

As to corporations, I said be specific and please tell me why I can judge the merits of your suggestions. Being vague here makes it impossible for me to understand precisely where you are coming from.

I am honestly trying to understand you and what you find as important as a person and another mentality. Please take this opportunity to share your thoughts with another mind. We may find common ground. We may add to each each other's uniqueness. We may contrast and compete. But simply refusing to engage robs us both of that experience to no gain at all.

You give me nothing and you get nothing because there is nothing I can say about nothing.

So far what I have from you is this... "we shouldn't be focused on this because it isn't important and should instead focus on 'stuff'"... That is literally how your argument reads to me at this point. I am not trying to strawman you. I am pointing out that this is what happens when you're intentionally vague. I can't judge if you do it.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[mwvdlee]

This is about whether the entity itself is considered a person, not whoever's running it.

If a corporation should be given personhood because it's run by humans, than surely cars, dolls and shoes deserve personhood too?

Go ask a Chipmanzee if it is human. Likely you'll get atleast some sort of response.
Now go ask an office building if it is human and see what response it gives you.

Quite frankly, giving a Chimpanzee personhood is slightly less insane than giving a corporation personhood.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[SuricouRaven]

Except in the case of tasty animals, in which case out desire for cheap meat and susceptibility to well-funded lobbying campaigns overrules the requirement for respect and makes it ok to cram them into cages scarcely bigger than they are for their entire life. So long as the end consumer doesn't have to think about it.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Harlequin80]

. Start by dissolving the ability of a corporation to have liability. The liability is shared by the stockholders or executive officers, prior to stock issuance.

And instantly you have destroyed your economy and way of life. What you have just described is the sole and singular reason corporations were formed in the first place. That is to limit the risk to an investor to the amount of money they have put into it. ie the value of the stocks they hold. If liability is held by the stockholders you make it an incredibly risky venture to be involved in a business. You buy $5 of stock in McDonalds, as a result of a law suit for activities outside of your control McDonalds is subject to a lawsuit judgement that exceeds its net worth. In the current setup you lose your $5, in your proposal you just lost your house, all your assets and your life savings - it just doesn't work.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I am honestly trying to understand you and what you find as important as a person and another mentality.

I have no idea as to what you are talking about. You mischaracterized US corporations simplistically and I spoke to the merit of a detailed discussion, in regards to the legalities involved. Baiting for solutions to such a complex issue, has nothing to do with personhood for animals (eg Chimps).

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

No (because of the language barrier), but they will have copyright on the picture they take. Finally !

David J. Slater

(captcha is "merited")

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

or abortions... What do you do when someone explains to a chimp (sighn language) that we abort children and they instinctually kill you for being a child murderer?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Sarius64]

Too bad your reality-bias is now Democrats in everyone's bedrooms.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Barsteward]

a lot of them seem to be posting on /. so why not?

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Barsteward]

don't demean chimps

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

why not they let Americans vote!

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like monkeys.

I like monkeys. The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece. I thought that odd since they were normally a couple thousand. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I bought 200. I like monkeys.

  I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in their genitals. I laughed. Then they punched my genitals. I stopped laughing.

  I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech, hurl themselves off of the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into its third hour.

  Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive: they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sorta' dropped dead. Kinda' like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. Damn cheap monkeys.

  I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room, on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs.

  I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and 199 dead, dry monkeys.

  I tried pretending that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad.

  I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in the toilet and I didn't want to call the plumber. I was embarrassed.

  I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately, there was only enough room for two monkeys at a time so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't all go bad.

  I tried burning them. Little did I know my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire.

  Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and 197 dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed. The odor wasn't improving.

  I became agitated at my inability to dispose of my monkeys and to use the bathroom. I severely beat one of my monkeys. I felt better.

  I tried throwing them away but the garbage man said that the city was not allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him that I had a wet one. He couldn't take that one either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.

  I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't know quite what to say. They pretended that they like them, but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.

I like monkeys.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[diamondmagic]

Corporate personhood refers to the ability to hold a corporation liable for debts and crimes. Are you suggesting I should be able to sue chimps but not corporations?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[erikkemperman]

What you have just described is the sole and singular reason corporations were formed in the first place. That is to limit the risk to an investor to the amount of money they have put into it. ie the value of the stocks they hold.

No, limited liability is a rather newer invention than incorporation. Only by about a millennium and a half.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[epyT-R]

You laugh, but these hippies will try for it...

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

well niggers vote so....

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[FireFury03]

If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.

Also, does that mean we have to jail them when they commit crimes against each other? (E.g. stealing each other's food, etc).

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[mwvdlee]

I'm suggesting you should be able to sue the humans responsible for the crimes of a corporation and not sue either chimps or corporations as all.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[diamondmagic]

You actually think a single person would be able to pay all the damages asked in many of today's lawsuits against corporations?

You think most people are willing to accept liability on behalf of their employer, with the potential to lose most all their property if found guilty?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BringsApples]

Chimpanzees will eventually die of their own natural causes. They end, and their effects on the world will end.

sed -e 's/Chimpanzees/Humans/'

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BringsApples]

Well said. Let us not forget that cars, dolls, and shoes have something that a corporation doesn't have: a physical existence.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BringsApples]

Specifically, what is happening that you dislike as a result of corporate personhood? I just want to understand where you are coming from here. Please be specific.

I don't know about them, but what I don't like is that the corporation has rights observed by courts, but it has no physical body that can be incarcerated.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hell you smoking? And where can I get some of that?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BringsApples]

So, when an ape kills another ape, will we be sending it to jail?

Not if he can get a snake to represent him in a way that clears him.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[mwvdlee]

If a person is criminal or criminally negligent (which is different from negligence), (s)he should be held accountable no matter what the role in a corporation.

Ridiculously high damage claims is an entirely different issue and, as I understand it, one that usually gets corrected by judges.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

Explain specifically what your problem is here?

Because it sounds like you're repeating something you heard from someone but haven't really thought about. It is hard for me to have a discussion about this issue until you've been very clear about your position.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[diamondmagic]

That's how criminal negligence already works, when's the last time a corporation was tried in court for murder?

I'm talking about enforcing contracts. My company orders a million dollars of widgets from Acme and they're never delivered. Who's responsible? I don't want to sue an individual, I'm never seeing my money back if that's the only option available. And if I did, some poor employee for Acme is going to lose their second car and probably have to sell their house.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chimps aren't people, but, they could hold political office and probably do. Ever get a good look at Dianne Feinstein?

Chimps should be first choice for scientific experimentation, but, due to Hollywood providing a false cuteness factor, the lowly rhesus monkey has been relegated to that job due to cheapness. Chimps are somewhat like retarded humans, but they bite and throw shit. People shouldn't be allowed to own them in this country; kids mistake them for friendly and get hurt. Chimps belong in the wild or in the lab. Period. I don't approve of zoos or circuses, either. I am against animal cruelty, but firmly believe apes and chimps are plentiful enough, bad enough and a better choice for destructive testing of products because of their similarities to humans. We can let all the bunnys and puppys go and only use monkeys to test dangerous things. Monkeys are bad, monkeys don't matter, kill the monkeys. A planet without monkeys is a happy planet.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start by dissolving the ability of a corporation to have liability. The liability is shared by the stockholders or executive officers, prior to stock issuance.

Are you suggesting that I, as a shareholder of Bank of America, should be personally liable for its policy of "robosigning" foreclosures? It sounds like you're suggesting that the actual corporate profits and assets (ie, my shares in the company) should not be used to pay any damages or make restitution, but that anyone wronged by a company would have to individually sue the thousands of investors to be made right. HTF is that supposed to work?

Or maybe you think Angelo Mozilo should have to pay from his own pocket for the Countrywide mortgage fiasco. I mean, he made nearly $500M during his tenure as CEO, I'm sure he could pay the $55 Billion fines collected from the company.

The only aspect of "personhood" that a corporation should enjoy is liability. It's the whole freaking point. What a corporation doesn't need is freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, or the right to vote.

If there is individual fraud or malfeasance within the corporation, those people need to be held personally accountable, and prosecutors seem to be particularly lenient when assessing guilt for 'company policy.' We'd all like to see someone punished for destroying the economy in 2007. We'd all like a bit of revenge. But it looks like the bad practices were widespread, known to the ineffective regulators, and you can't just put all the bankers in jail. Drawing a line where "This level of missing documentation is criminal" is going to look arbitrary, wherever you put the line.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[codeButcher]

But I believe most animals should still have the protection of being sentient beings, much like we protect infants and retarded people.

Or, we could free the chimps and use aborted fetuses for clinical trials instead. Or perhaps remove the "unwanted tissue" from the mother without damaging it and (for instance) use a surrogate mother or some future "artificial womb" to have it mature sufficiently for research needs....

Not to start a pro-abortion/pro-life debate here, but it does point out the minefield of deciding what is human and what not, what is a person and what not, what deserves legal protection and what not.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of these problems wouldn't be an issue if we, humans, were humane.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[AmiMoJo]

It would be like a child murdering another child. There would be sanctions, probably confinement, treatment, possible partial culpability for the owners/parents etc.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[tehcyder]

That would be great news for corporations, of course.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[tburkhol]

What you have just described is the sole and singular reason corporations were formed in the first place. That is to limit the risk to an investor to the amount of money they have put into it. ie the value of the stocks they hold.

No, limited liability is a rather newer invention than incorporation. Only by about a millennium and a half.

Are you sure you're reading that wiki right, dude? It sure looks like they're claiming that Rome defined corporate entities as separate legal structures with their own liability in the mid 6th century. The unlimited liability the wiki refers to seems to be specific to UK law, and especially to companies created by royal charter, as the establishment of modern stock-based corporations was followed rapidly by the Limited Liability Act.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[arth1]

Or, we could free the chimps and use aborted fetuses for clinical trials instead. Or perhaps remove the "unwanted tissue" from the mother without damaging it and (for instance) use a surrogate mother or some future "artificial womb" to have it mature sufficiently for research needs....

From what I can tell from the above, it shows that it's impossible to even discuss this in an objective way - any discussion will deteriorate into appeals to feelings.

I think the judge needs to state that animals have a right to be judged by their own, and that any act of giving them personhood takes away that right.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[msauve]

Congress should have the ability to pass legislation restricting the actions of corporations in any way they want.

Corporations are artificial legal constructs which allow special privileges (tax and liability advantages, mainly) to their owners. Since they're constructs of law, they're subject to legal regulation. Corporations are not people, and do not have rights. No right to free speech, no right to vote, etc.

That does not infringe on any individual rights - people still have the right and ability to band together for group speech, etc. They simply can't do it and also gain the special privileges given to corporations.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[oodaloop]

Perhaps not. But can you send a corporation to prison?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

As to congress and the corporation, they are associations of people. If you think they can have their rights reduced at will, then you must give a reason for why they can have their rights reduced but other human associations cannot have them reduced.

As to a corporation being an artificial legal construct... what isn't? What is a not for profit charity? It is likewise artificial and likewise a legal construct. What about a labor union. Likewise artificial... likewise a legal construct.

Why are you singling corporations out and on what basis. You cannot do it on the basis of being either artificial or a legal construct. Neither criteria is unusual.

The primary problem with your idea is that it infringes on the freedom of association. Corps are associations of people. Think of them like clubs. Under the law they're only different for tax purposes. And those differences only exist because clubs rarely generate a taxable income.

Again, you really need to address the freedom of association if you're going to deal with this issue. It is typical for people that deal with this to skip over that. You can't and retain intellectual integrity.

If your argument is that only individuals should be allowed to exercise freedom of speech that leads to all sorts of problems.

This is by and large a half baked issue pushed around by political groups that are mostly just upset that a corporation didn't donate to their political cause. While at the same time being more then happy to take funding from other equally dubious sources. I see no moral high ground on this issue.

I grant that corps are often a bad influence on national politics. But then so are all the lobbying groups. I don't see how they're any worse.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[tehcyder]

Well said. Let us not forget that cars, dolls, and shoes have something that a corporation doesn't have: a physical existence.

So what? "The Military" or "The Government" don't have an individual physical existence either, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

More along the lines of a person like an intelligent dog is a person. It's clear they aren't as evolved as us but it's also clear that they are much farther along than the rest of the animal kingdom. Dolphins too, it's fascinating to watch videos of them in the wild on youtube, they're clever as hell in small groups and kinda lazy in big groups just like a lot of people I know.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[NetNed]

It does bring new hope to the Lancelot Link party dream of one day holding office.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Talderas]

There's really only two paths out. The first path is to pass a constitutional amendment granting Congress the power to regulate campaign contributions. The second path is to reverse the decision on Buckley v. Valeo. Everything else is pointless grumbling and misinformation.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Culture20]

No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is simple.
Corporations get rights, but they rarely get punished (i.e. dissolved or whatever you call it for a corporation).
In the end it always turns into a "no one knew what was going on". The corporation gets a minor fine and live goes on as usual.
If corporations are people then they should be sent to prison too when they are caught stealing millions of dollars.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[PhilHibbs]

s/Chimpanzees/Humans/;

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Talderas]

I'm not sure if this comment is racist, insightful, or funny....

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

... the court dicision is based on the only rational interpretation of the law. What is more you are dodging the question of freedom of association.

You clearly view the corporations as undeserving of influence over civic processes. Very well, but what legal distinction would be you make between a corporation and any other lobbying group?

Mother's against drunk driving? Artificial legal construct.

People for the ethical treatment of animals? Artificial legal construct.

World Wildlife Foundation? Artificial legal construct.

You cut the corps out and you cut all the lobbying groups out as well. You can't say one is okay and the other is not without biasing the political process. You're not removing corruption if you do that. You're picking winners and losers in political debates and thus subverting democracy.

Look, the issues of money in politics are very serious and I think we should reform it. However, if you are going to reform it, then you need to reform it for all factions at once. If you try to bias the system so that some factions can contribute and others cannot... you give those factions that are at a disadvantage no reason to permit the action. And that means you're not going to get their cooperation in congress.

As to this notion that you'll just change the law by arbitarily changing court rulings... that is the height of anti democratic theory. That's dictatorial. The courts ideally must JUDGE the law as written by the legislature. They should neither make the law nor say what should or should not be law. Their purpose is to judge the law not create it.

The freedom of association is what grants the corps access to the political process. Not this collection of misunderstood buzzwords.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[jythie]

That is actually kinda what cases like this are about, non-humans having limited legal rights as entities (as opposed to property) within the legal framework. I think there was another one winding its way through the system having to do with donations and if the ownerless chimp could legally accept them (with through a legal guardian) to fund transfer to a preserve.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[internerdj]

I'm confused. I was pretty sure the chimps were specifically bred to hold political office. What have I been voting for all this time?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations could easily claim the right of their own volition, assuming you're willing to acknowledge the corporation as a composite entity.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Monkeys

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot.. The US govt is full of monkeys already.. They govern sheep well.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[tsqr]

I think the right to personhood should be given to anyone who of their own volition can claim the right. And yes, that also means taking it away from many who have it today. Including corporations.

Also including labor unions, non-profit organizations, political action committees... anything that isn't an individual human being. And depending what "of their own volition" really means, you'd probably have to eliminate a lot of individuals as well.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[am 2k]

And yes, that also means taking it away from many who have it today.

Including foreigners that have trouble with the local language and all infants.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[shaitand]

You don't sue people for crimes you imprison them. I can imprison a chimp, how exactly do you imprison a chimp?

Also, you are using misdirection. Corporate person hood refers to more than the ability to hold a corporation liable. It refers to giving the corporation rights and protections in addition to those already enjoyed by the individuals who make up the corporation. The concept taken to it's extreme would give my wife and I (who now hold control of a corporation) an extra vote in an election.

Most importantly, from the liability you aspect you mentioned, is that instead of my wife and I being responsible for the crimes we collectively commit under the umbrella of that piece of paper, the paper is liable. We can do all sorts of unethical and evil using it's name, then fold that paper up and put it away if it doesn't all work out.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[hey!]

Well do children get to vote? Hold office?

The state takes a protective stance toward children that it does not toward adults, because children while human are neither competent to exercise adult freedoms nor fully capable of defending themselves against adult humans. The state recognizes the human rights of children less in protecting their exercise of free rights or participation in the public sphere than by protecting them from arm and ensuring they are nurtured to some minimal standard.

Presumably the status sought for chips is similar. To turn your questions around, is it OK to capture children from their native environment as bush meat or for purposes of experimentation?

When you're apply reductio ad absurdum to a proposal, you ought to ensure the nature of that proposal is unchanged, otherwise you're just scoring emotional points.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[mwvdlee]

A corporation would be neither happy nor sad about that news.
The owners and directors of the corporation will be shitting in their pants, though.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Talderas]

It is not the freedom of association that grants corps access to the political process. That's simply the mechanism by which corps cannot be prevented from participating. The Citizens United case was a ruling that states that all corporations must be treated equally thus if corporations like Exxon Mobile were to be prevented from free speech corporations like PETA, Sierra Club, NRA, CBS, or ABC would also need to be equally restricted. Since this restriction would serve as a restriction on the free press it was thrown out. What gives them access to political process is the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision which ruled that spending money constitutes free speech so reversing that decision by getting it overturned is the saner and more realistic choice because if money is no longer considered free speech then the corporation cannot spend money for free speech. Then it is reliant on other means such as protesters, pickets, and other demonstrations. The only way to reverse that is to have some state, or the federal government, craft legislation that would restrict money being spent as free speech, knowing full well that it is against that ruling. That would prompt a new constitutional challenge that would need to be appealed up to the Supreme Court and successfully argued that the 1976 ruling should not continue to apply. Overturning decisions is uncommon but not unheard of and it is a natural process.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[operagost]

That's like saying a human being isn't alive because the part we see is mostly a layer of nonliving kertin and dead skin cells.

A corporation is not a building. A corporation doesn't even need to have assets. One thing is does need is at least one living, breathing officer.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate personhood refers to the ability to hold a corporation liable for debts and crimes. Are you suggesting I should be able to sue chimps but not corporations?

Let's be realistic. You probably can't successfully sue a corporation either.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[aeortiz]

Don't forget taxes!

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[SydShamino]

A corporation enjoys special tax and legal status not available to individuals. In exchange for that status, the government can and should demand that they give up their so-called "right" to free speech (the same way non-profit groups can be restricted so long as they wish to retain their non-profit status).

The law should also be changed to make it easier to pierce the corporate veil and prosecute executives, employees, and board members. The defense of "I didn't know what the other guys were doing so I couldn't see the whole picture" should be evidence of conspiracy, not a defense.

Punishment for corporations found guilty of crimes should be more than token fines. Yes, non-employee shareholders of publicly-traded companies enjoy limited liability for those companies' actions, but they do have liability up to the value of the stock. No, it doesn't make sense to give corporations the "death penalty" very often, so long as the company had some legal business, but the government should be better able to seize assets, primarily stock and options, especially from executives. The public will demand more accountability from the companies they own if they know that corporate crime will more often cost them their ownership directly, not just as a blip in profit.

Because government in this country is so limited and the benefits of monopoly (or, more likely duopoly) so immense, corporates naturally grow in size until they are "too big to fail". Again, as with free speech in exchange for special tax status, corporations do not have the right to grow so big or become so vital to the economy that their collapse would lead to destabilization of the country. The government should regularly be reviewing this and taking actions to break those companies up, or prevent the mergers that lead to this situation in the first place. Maximizing efficiency and profits through consolidation when times are good leads to increased instability when times are bad. It is the government's job to regulate the economy to ensure the general welfare, and that includes smoothing both the highs and lows.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[SydShamino]

Limited liability is a privilege, not a right. Think of anything else corporations today demand - including their new so-called "free speech" - and realize that all of those things can be negotiated away to those voluntarily seeking this limited liability.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[luis_a_espinal]

Corporate personhood refers to the ability to hold a corporation liable for debts and crimes.

We were able to do that without that legal shenanigans (just like other countries do).

Are you suggesting I should be able to sue chimps but not corporations?

1. False dichotomy.

2. A better suggestion would be to sue individuals on whose behalf, by virtue of negligence or criminality, a corporation became liable for debts and crimes (specially crimes.)

But hey, you can ignore #2 and embrace #1 if that's your thing.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a corporation causes deaths, knowingly or through negligence, they go to jail (or are put to death?) ... not just fines ... yes, the whole company (or at least the top leaders) go to jail for an equivalent period of time to what a regular person would.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[luis_a_espinal]

That's how criminal negligence already works, when's the last time a corporation was tried in court for murder?

It shouldn't. The individuals along the chain of command and supervision that committed the murder should be tried in civil court, and the corporation should be tried for damages in civil court if the corporation is found to have fostered a system that permitted the crime to occur in the first place.

I'm talking about enforcing contracts. My company orders a million dollars of widgets from Acme and they're never delivered. Who's responsible?

Acme. You do not need corporate personhood to sue Acme.

I don't want to sue an individual,

If the "corporation" is a single-person entity that is not incorporated for limited liability, that's your option (and one would ask why you would order a million dollar of widgets from said commercial entity.)

I'm never seeing my money back if that's the only option available.

Any intelligent business entity would never entered into a contract under such conditions. Also, contracts spell out responsibilities (who pays what and how much when defaulting a contract), in a document enforced by the law.

And under some conditions, the individual can be sued in a criminal court of law if he/she is found to have not acted in good faith.

And if I did, some poor employee for Acme is going to lose their second car and probably have to sell their house.

If the company is a single-person entity, yeah, pretty much. If it is a LLC, then you go after the corp's asset. And if it is a corporation, you go after the corporation's assets.

You do not need corporate personhood. It is a stupid American legal aberration. How the hell do you think developed countries like Japan or Germany that do not have such a notion handle violation of contracts or trials against corporations?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[MightyMartian]

Chimps kill young chimps. When tribes make war on each other, the killing of enemy tribes young is well documented. Chimps are pretty much as brutal as humans at the game of war.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[almitydave]

Or, we could free the chimps and use aborted fetuses for clinical trials instead. Or perhaps remove the "unwanted tissue" from the mother without damaging it and (for instance) use a surrogate mother or some future "artificial womb" to have it mature sufficiently for research needs....

From what I can tell from the above, it shows that it's impossible to even discuss this in an objective way - any discussion will deteriorate into appeals to feelings.

I think the judge needs to state that animals have a right to be judged by their own, and that any act of giving them personhood takes away that right.

Actually, the GP's entire comment rationally presents an important ethical challenge that needs to be addressed for both issues (animal personhood and abortion), regarding members of one class/species defining personhood for another. We need to be capable of discussing this rationally without resorting to emotional non-arguments, since it's fundamental to all other discussions about social rights and responsibilities.

As for this case, the judge has to stick to the law and the facts, and I just don't see any legal basis for granting the status of "person" to animals that are not members of homo sapiens. Like the GP indicates, it would be very dangerous indeed for the judge to create some previously unrecognized criteria for defining persons beyond that.

I am very interested in the topic of sentience, intelligence, reason and personhood - since we evolved from non-intelligent species eventually acquiring the ability to reason, presumably other species on this planet will eventually evolve likewise as well.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BringsApples]

I don't know why you keep asking everyone to dance for you here, man. Go look up Enron.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[almitydave]

It's a satirical reference to the 3/5 compromise which is commonly (and erroneously) claimed to have defined slaves as 3/5 of a person. What it said was that when counting population for the purpose of taxation and congressional representation, you counted free persons and 3/5 of slaves.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[BringsApples]

Well I never said that they don't exist. Point is that there is no way to physically bind the corporation in a prison cell so that it can both think about it's actions, and be prevented from doing those actions again (at least while in prison).

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[sudon't]

Corporate personhood has nothing to do with the ability to hold a corporation liable for debts and crimes. I wish it did - I'd love to see them convict and execute a corporation for murder. Corporate personhood is about corporations gaining constitutional rights, such as the right to free speech. If it were about taking on liability, do you think corporations would be clamoring for it like they do?

In most societies, with rights come responsibilities, (at least when it comes to actual persons). Instead of granting rights to animals, with god knows what unintended consequences, we should should be holding humans to their responsibility not to harm animals.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[arth1]

And? We already tell them that we don't consider them full persons, by curtailing the rights that real persons have, like voting, running for president, and as member of a jury condemning someone. They're not our peers, but only persons in potentia.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[arth1]

Which would be fine, if every part of that composite at the same time gave up their right to personhood.

If I'm a person, I can't claim that my left and right brain hemispheres also are persons. I don't get 3 votes.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[msauve]

" they are associations of people. If you think they can have their rights reduced at will,"

No, they are a subset of "associations of people." A subset which relies upon specific legal privileges to exist.

"As to a corporation being an artificial legal construct... what isn't?"

One example - I my friends and I get together, take up a collection and print and pass out political leaflets, there's no legal construct - we have every right to do so under "free association." There is absolutely nothing which requires forming a corporation in order to exercise free association. I am saying that if we instead want to incorporate and take advantage of the laws which grant special privileges to corporations, the state has every right to be able to say for what purpose that corporation may be formed, and that includes limiting the speech that corporation may make.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Mike Buddha]

Chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys, you jerk.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[StikyPad]

Poo is #2. #1 is something else entirely.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought political offices were already filled with chimps?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the right to personhood should be given to anyone who of their own volition can claim the right. And yes, that also means taking it away from many who have it today.

I disagree. The right of personhood should not depend on ones ability to defend oneself from others who would violate that right. If a third-party wishes to come to the aide of another in defending their right to personhood, I see nothing wrong with that.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I came here to say. I'm more okay with granting 'personhood' to intelligent animals than corporations...

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Jane Q. Public]

If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.

I've seen this coming ever since Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission.

But no, that's not a joke.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[DamnOregonian]

I haven't really seen anyone point this out in spite of you regularly making the conflation between for-profit corporations and not-for-profit corporations.
Am I wrong to see a distinction there?

One utilizes the willingly donated resources of the people for the purpose of lobbying for policy to lobby for policy, the other uses the resources of people, often given up because they have no real choice (we've got to live, right?) to lobby against the interests of those very same people.

Corporate personhood doesn't bother me so much as the abuse it allowed in campaign financing. Fix that, and I don't have any legitimate beef against corporations being more-or-less people.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Talderas]

I understand the reference. All three responses are valid interpretations depending on your own knowledge base and perceptions. For instance, chimp and monkey have at times been used in a derogatory manner towards black people.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[JesseMcDonald]

What gives them access to political process is the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision which ruled that spending money constitutes free speech so reversing that decision by getting it overturned is the saner and more realistic choice because if money is no longer considered free speech then the corporation cannot spend money for free speech.

I really don't see how the freedom to spend money on speech—whether that means renting out a venue, printing up a batch of fliers, taking out an ad in a newspaper, or running political commercials on TV—could possibly be considered less than absolutely essential to the core concept of free speech. That would be akin to saying that you're free to hold any opinion that you want privately, but aren't allowed to communicate it in any effective way to a broad audience.

Money isn't speech per se. However, effectively exercising your right to free speech necessarily involves the expenditure of resources, including money. The money is really just a scapegoat; even if you banned financial contributions, those with money would still be able to support their favorite causes with donated goods and services, not to mention access to ready networks of influential contacts.

The real problem here is the way that those with resources can influence the government to act in their favor at the expense of those without. The more the government grows and becomes involved in people's day-to-day lives, the more competition there is over political control—and that's a fight that the common people cannot win. The solution is to shrink the scope of that power by restricting the influence of the government over all our lives. When the government is limited to fair arbitration and enforcement of a small set of universal laws, favoring no group over another, there is no reason to struggle for political influence. In an ideal world the role of Senator would be mainly clerical, consisting of minor and uncontroversial updates to wording to reflect modern use, and perhaps the occasional clarification or trivial refinement of well-established principles. Major changes would be exceedingly rare, and backed by near-unanimous consent.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Talderas]

I agree. I don't think reversing Buckley v. Valeo is very likely. However it's the simpler route when talking about the court decisions that lead to Citizens United. The web of decisions that lead to the inevitability of Citizens United is far more complex so going after the money is the better method. It's also simpler in the sense that you need just a single state to pass a single law in order for it to have a chance of reaching SCOTUS. Going with undoing the other decisions would require a number of laws and you would be dealing with a couple decisions made by a majority of the current sitting justices making it unlikely to be overruled.

The more robust method would to be to pass a constitutional amendment that expressly grants Congress that power to regulate campaign spending but even that has its pitfalls. The problem with this plan would be getting Congress to push this Amendment, fat chance since the current system is of benefit to them, or require the states to instigate a Constitutional Convention, which has never happened, once again getting past the pesky politicians although ones likely more ameniable to the voters.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[JesseMcDonald]

The privileges of incorporation mainly relate to reducing the burden of other requirements the government itself imposes. Without incorporation you could still have arrangements such as limited liability (by contract) with regards to voluntary interactions such as debts, and that same limited liability wouldn't necessary protect you if you cause harm while acting on behalf of the organization ("piercing the corporate veil"). I don't really have any problem with eliminating incorporation as a legal concept—I don't think all that much would change—but only if other changes are made such that the burden imposed by the government doesn't cause disproportionate problems for people exercising their freedom of association and acting as a group. That basically means that the government would still need to deal with associations of individuals as a group when it comes to things like revenues and taxes and property held in common. Incorporation is little more than formal recognition of that status.

In your example, which individual in your group took custody of the funds donated for the leaflets? How were they accounted for with regards to personal income tax? If they ran off with the money, who would be responsible? Those are the kinds of questions incorporation was meant to answer. Addressing them in a legally binding way doesn't require any special privileges, and remains well within the scope of freedom of association.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[JesseMcDonald]

If it were about taking on liability, do you think corporations would be clamoring for it like they do? ... In most societies, with rights come responsibilities....

The only responsibility which comes along with any right is the responsibility to extend that same right to others. Rights being by nature universal, you can't claim a right yourself which you deny to anyone else. The constitutional rights being extended to corporations (or rather, to groups of individuals acting together as a corporation) are rights which are already secured to everyone else, so that responsibility is immediately fulfilled.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

What legal privilege do you think corps have that you don't want them to have. Be specific please. You keep repeating talking points, catch phrases, and buzz words but I don't think you know what they mean. No offense. I would just like you to describe what you want to change in your own words so I know precisely what you are talking about and know that you know what you're talking about.

As to passing out leaflets with your friend, that might work if there are two of you. But what if there are several thousand of you? Then you need an organization. And if you forbid associations that would mean that such organizations would be illegal or would have limited rights. Is that your intention?

Do you want Planned Parenthood to not be allowed to participate in the political process?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

Corporate management goes to jail all the time for things like that. Some fool just referenced Enron trying to say that corps don't pay the price... but the CEO of enron went to prison so that doesn't make any sense.

Corporate personhood does not mean you are immune from the law. If you PERSONALLY make choices then you're going to be held accountable for those choices.

Corporate personhood exists mostly to shield investors and not corporate management. If I buy stock in a company and that company does something immoral, should I as an investor, be held accountable for that? Obviously not. All I did was buy some stock.

Can you cite an example where a corporation was proven to have committed a crime and yet they were exempted from the law due to your notion of corporate personhood?

See, I think you misunderstand what corporate personhood means. Someone explained it to you badly and you're jumping to unfortunate conclusions. It doesn't work that way.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

In regards to special tax and legal status... Let us go through that.

1. They are double taxed. The income is taxed at the corporate level and then taxed at the investor level.

2. The legal status is different because the investors have extremely limited liability for the actions of the company. This is mostly the difference between a corp and anything else. The protections exist almost entirely between the investor and the company. Not between the management of the company and the law.

If you have some specific examples you'd like to discuss we can do that. But I think a lot of people in this discussion were misinformed about how this works and are jumping to incorrect conclusions.

As to giving up their right to free speech, I am not seeing how you can do that given the freedom of association. You're going to need to change the constitution if you want to do that.

As to your notion that the burden of proof should be on the defense to prove their innocence that is clearly unjust and not going to happen. If you want to prove someone is guilty then the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove it. Suggesting otherwise is irrational.

As to holding executives accountable for fraud etc... executives are sent to jail for fraud. If they break the law it generally does result in them going to jail. That said, if the matter is a civil one and the penalty is a fine... generally I don't see the problem with the corporation paying the fine especially since the amounts of money we're talking about exceed anything even the senor management is going to have.

THAT SAID, I agree with you to the extent that I think senor management are often not very accountable to shareholders. The boards of directors are often puppets of the senor management instead of representatives for the shareholders.

Something which might help is if the board of directors were required by law to represent the shareholders. Either by quantity of stock held or by the direct election of those individuals by the shareholders to the board of directors. And that board should have oversight over the company on behalf of the shareholders.

Keep in mind that most CEOs that go nuts and do stupid thing are acting against the interests of the shareholders when they do that.

This would be a solution to our problem here without having to rewrite the constitution.
As to corporations being dominant, much of that is government's fault. We used to have more family businesses. But between the death tax confiscating half of a family fortune every generation and the ever expanding regulation... it isn't possible in most cases to run a large enterprise unless it is a corporation.

Consider how many major corps could survive if every generation they had to liquidate 50 percent of all assets... all capital... simply to pay taxes. Family businesses have to do that.

We're seeing some attempts to avoid the death tax with living trusts etc... but they don't work very well.

And it is because of this that we get corporations running everything. That and we've made everything so complicated that only a dedicated legal team can maintain compliance.

As to the government's job to regulate the economy, I don't agree with that point. I think the government's job is to protect the nation from external threats and maintain justice internally. Everything beyond that is a luxury.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

Okay, but spending money is a form of free speech.

Think about it. Let us say you are a newspaper. Is paper free? Is ink free? Are writers free? Are editors free? Are delivery trucks free?

Do you give your news away for free?

No on all counts. Newspapers are also corporations are they not? And yet they participate very actively in the political process. In fact, most news agencies are owned by larger parent corporations and they often push an agenda through their media divisions.

Would you forbid news outlets from taking political positions or expressing opinions?

Lets back out and talk about the World Wildlife Foundation. They engage in various campaigns all the time. And those campaigns cost money. Without the money they couldn't do a lot of it. They need to hire ad agencies. They need to rent office space. They need to buy plane tickets. And all of that money is in the service of influencing the political process and free speech. They do it all to be heard. Which means all the money they spend is to speak.

Money is less speech then it is required for speech in many cases. Without money you can't buy the megaphone to be heard.

And consider further that many people donate money to organizations AS a form of speech. If I donate to the World Wildlife Foundation, then I expect that money to go into environmental activism. And that means my contribution was my exercise of free speech.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not get a reply from him because you've won the argument. He's just an asshole troll who thinks he's smart because he types with big words. Big words he regularly misuses or misspells but big words none the less. That makes him speshiall so he gets to be an asshole and the rest of us get told to fuck off. I can't even keep him off my screen since his astroturfing accounts mod his shit above threshold. He's been at it all week. Must be a teen, they're out of school for fall break this week.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to badger people about parroting things they hear or read but every single post you've made has been you repeating the same flawed logic over and over again. We're tired of it. You're a broken god damned record......

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

What you are describing is typical when bringing a legal case against ANY group.

Consider what just happened with the IRS denying tax exempt status to political activists opposed to the sitting president. They're literally destroying evidence and every time something comes up they shrug their shoulders.

This isn't a corporate issue. It is a group issue. You do have a very valid point about it being hard to determine who did what and when. However, that doesn't mean corporations are uniquely to blame for this situation. And removing corporate personhood would not change this situation. If I am in a limited partnership with a bunch of other people... and something happens... who knew what? The burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove their case. If the cannot do that then the accused walks away.

That is what is happening here. Most corporations get away with things because the prosecution doesn't have enough evidence. It isn't because of some shadowy secret law that lets corps just ignore the law.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[diamondmagic]

Acme. You do not need corporate personhood to sue Acme.

If the company is a single-person entity, yeah, pretty much. If it is a LLC, then you go after the corp's asset. And if it is a corporation, you go after the corporation's assets.

Regular individuals can't bring a lawsuit against property ("John Doe v. Three gallons of milk" makes as much sense as "John Doe v. 60 shares of Acme, Inc."). Hence, corporate personhood.

Any intelligent business entity would never entered into a contract under such conditions. Also, contracts spell out responsibilities (who pays what and how much when defaulting a contract), in a document enforced by the law.

How much commerce do you think we do without the ability to enter into high-value contracts? Virtually none.

How do you think we enforce contracts against corporations? Corporate personhood.

You do not need corporate personhood. It is a stupid American legal aberration. How the hell do you think developed countries like Japan or Germany that do not have such a notion handle violation of contracts or trials against corporations?

They aren't Common Law states (countries), but nonetheless it's handled roughly the same.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Harlequin80]

Call it a privilege if you want. Without liabilities limited to the value of the corporation business as we know if would cease. The risk profile goes through the roof and people would simply not invest their money. Everything would collapse over night.

Secondly on the argument of privilege vs right. There are no rights. Everything you claim as a right, be it the right to assembly, right to free speech or whatever is something that is given to you as a privilege of living in a society that holds those values. If you change societies or the society around you changes these "rights" can cease.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[diamondmagic]

Also, you are using misdirection. Corporate person hood refers to more than the ability to hold a corporation liable. It refers to giving the corporation rights and protections in addition to those already enjoyed by the individuals who make up the corporation.

The ability to enter into a contract necessarily implies you have rights to own property, and trade that property with whoever you wish. Corporations have just as much right to buy or sell bananas or advertisements or widgets as I do.

The concept taken to it's extreme would give my wife and I (who now hold control of a corporation) an extra vote in an election.

In the US, votes aren't given to persons, but to individuals who are citizens of a certain age, and possibly other restrictions depending on state. Do mind the semantics, because corporate persons obviously don't fit in here.

If a different standard for voting was used, e.g. "Property owners cast votes proportional to how much land they own", then yes, corporations would cast votes. This is how it already works for voting for membership of corporate boards, so I don't see a problem with this. Obviously, that's a big "if".

Most importantly, from the liability you aspect you mentioned, is that instead of my wife and I being responsible for the crimes we collectively commit under the umbrella of that piece of paper, the paper is liable. We can do all sorts of unethical and evil using it's name, then fold that paper up and put it away if it doesn't all work out.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Marriage means you and your wife are considered a single person for certain purposes. Even if you have an LLC, you can't commit fraud - that's criminal, and you could be individually found guilty.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[diamondmagic]

We were able to do that without that legal shenanigans (just like other countries do).

What legal shenanigans? It's much simpler just to say "Hey, I can form a corporation that can make contracts and conduct business just like a sole proprietor can". You know, instead of having to write into the law "An individual or civil union or LLC or LLP or corporation or..." every time you want to refer to the concept.

Are you suggesting I should be able to sue chimps but not corporations?

1. False dichotomy.

It can't be a false dichotomy, it has a yes or no answer (or maybe "sometimes").

2. A better suggestion would be to sue individuals on whose behalf, by virtue of negligence or criminality, a corporation became liable for debts and crimes (specially crimes.)

Would you go to work knowing you could become liable for a botched order, or if your employer went bankrupt? Possibly losing your second car, maybe have to sell your house? Didn't think so. (That can and does happen to sole proprietors.)

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

99 dead baboons sitting in my living room......

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look, Bill Gates is on /.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

1. From a free speech stand point why would you make a distinction between a for profit entity and a not for profit entity? On what basis does one lose its right to freedom of speech and the other lose it?

2. As to campaign financing, I have no problem with your policy if you apply it equally to everything. Limit the freedoms of all associations of people and by all means you can do it to corporations as well.

Absent that you've arbitrarily limited the rights of political opponents for your own crass partisan gain.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

The difference is that I said what was being repeated and then examined the logic of it to show it to be ill considered.

You just gainsaid me with zero basis or justification for it.

So if you have a problem with something I said, say what it was and why.

Otherwise, extent your right thumb until it is 90 degrees from your index finger, raise yourself off your seat about six inches, place your hand thumb up on the seat, and then gently lower yourself back onto the seat.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

That isn't an answer to my question. I am well aware that there have been corporate frauds.

Further, that is a really stupid example because the CEO went to prison. Where was his magical corporate immunity from the law? He went to prison. So... wtf are you even talking about?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[parkinglot777]

It would be like a child murdering another child. There would be sanctions, probably confinement, treatment, possible partial culpability for the owners/parents etc.

What are you going to do with a wild chimp (no "human" owner/guardiance)? And what are you going to do with the chimp's parents because they are partially response to the murder of another chimp???

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[shaitand]

You realize it takes 1-3 people and about $200 to have a corporation right? You don't need to be Bill Gates.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I believe most animals should still have the protection of being sentient beings, much like we protect infants and retarded people.

All but the tasty ones.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they be jailed for pot possession? Will my chimp have to stop growing?

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[rezme]

Out of all of that, apes vs. monkeys was what you chose to take issue with? lmfao!

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[rezme]

Hahahahaha, you really think that's what corporate personhood is about? The ability to sue them? That's unbelievably cute. I could just put you in my pocket. Let me give you a hint, it was about the ability to make political donations in the name of a corporation.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[david_thornley]

In any large corporation, you're highly unlikely to be able to pin down which human was responsible. Also, corporations have wound up doing more damage than any individual in their structure can pay for.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[david_thornley]

Long before that stupid Supreme Court decision, people were suing corporations.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[david_thornley]

Which anti-Obama groups had tax-exempt status refused? The complaints I've seen were that the IRS delayed their applications for extra scrutiny, and I've read that the only organization that didn't become tax-exempt was more or less pro-Obama. Moreover, the IRS didn't destroy evidence. The IRS didn't keep emails past six months, and the personal copies had become lost over the years.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[david_thornley]

An association of people does not have every legal right an individual person does. If I form an association of voters, each individual in the association has the legal right to vote in elections, and the association does not. Nobody's rights are being infringed here.

People don't care about the problem just because corporation X donated to politicians they didn't like. Lots of people care because they believe getting all that money into political campaigns is a Bad Idea.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

If you concern is associations giving money to politicians then don't focus on corporations. That makes about as much sense as if I said "unions shouldn't be allowed to give money to politicians" but then didn't say anything about corporations or other associations.

if your idea is getting money out of politics, I think you'll find a lot of people that will agree with you.

There are problems with this idea though.

1. What if they don't give money to the politician but instead just say things in the media that effect the campaign?

2. What if the whole point of the association is to effect public policy? Are associations forbidden from petitioning the government? ... I could go on... there are problems with your idea.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Reziac]

This isn't actually about getting rights for chimps. It's about getting them declared people so that animal rights groups can sue other people (specifically the chimps' owners) on behalf of the chimps. Once established, this will trickle down to include all animals, thus to make pet ownership too legally risky, since anyone could sue you on behalf of your pet. (Ditto raising livestock.) Yet another step in the ARs' avowed goal of ending animal ownership and use.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

Here is the story for you:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I thought everyone had heard of this already.

As to the IRS not destroying evidence... *rollseyes* whatever, bro.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose that we define a chimp as 3/5ths of a person. There's precedent, at least...

According to that precedent, you still get to keep them in cages, and execute them by hanging if they try to learn how to read.

Depending on the similarity threshold of individual genotypes, a chimp is between 96% and 99% of a person.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7404/full/nature11128.html

A chimpanzee would probably understand this ratio just fine.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203094823.htm

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[DamnOregonian]

From a free speech stand point why would you make a distinction between a for profit entity and a not for profit entity?

Simple. Because one of those represents the voting interests of the people who fund it, the other does not.
One funnels my money willingly for purposes I have a choice in, one does not.
The not-for-profit, assuming it's a registered lobby that's faithfully representing its funders, is doing just that- representing its funders.
The for-profit isn't. It's representing a board of directors, greatly amplifying their actual voice. Making their vote bigger than it really should be. They're more than welcome to use their personal funds to lobby though.

In short, the not-for-profit can be seen simply as a pooled resource of a bunch of individual people lobbying their government, while the for-profit is the pooled resources of a possibly massive segment of a market, not representing those people at all. No matter how you try to spin it, there is a difference. It's not crass or political. I have no desire to disenfranchise the wealthy corporate lords, but they can use their own money.

Absent that you've arbitrarily limited the rights of political opponents for your own crass partisan gain.

That is patently false. I'm a little stunned that someone going through such lengths to display intelligence, such as yourself, would even try to peddle something like that.
Allow me to paraphrase,
If you disagree with my assertion that a business is no different than a voter representation body, you're a dirty leninist out to subvert democracy for your own power.

Shame on you.

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

As to non-profits representing voting interests, that isn't any more true then with a company.

A lobbying group can be funded in some cases mostly by a very small number of very rich people. Or the entity could be running on an endowment from many years ago. Take the Getty Foundation which was set up by J Paul Getty. It is one of the richest art advocacy organizations in the world and basically no one donates to it. It operates as a company and the one person that really gave it a lot of money has been dead for decades.

So no.

If you changed the way that non-profits worked such that they could not receive more then 10 or 50 dollars per person then it would be closer to what you're talking about. But they don't work that way. And you'd also be acknowledging in the process that money is speech.

As your final comment, insulting me and strawmanning me do not strengthen your argument. That just makes you look desperate and unethical.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[DamnOregonian]

Mocking your strawman with an exaggerated version is strawmanning you? Fascinating. Carry on, soldier. ;)

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Karmashock]

Where did I strawman you? I made an accusation of what you are doing. I did not misrepresent your position.

If you notion of strawmanning is anyone that views your position unflatteringly then it is almost impossible to not strawman someone. That said, you've effectively strawmanned the very concept of strawmanning which is as invalid as strawmanning itself. You appear to be strawmanning the english language now by arbitrarily redefining words as convenient.

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[RockDoctor]

You're not a Terry Pratchett / Discworld fan, are you?

Re: Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[RockDoctor]

Poor AC doesn't know his basic microbiology.

Take whatever pots you have large enough to take at least one monkey (ape!) ; stack the pots onto the stove as compactly as possible with as many monkeys as possible and a reasonable amounts of water per pot ; set the stove to start boiling the monkeys.

While your monkeys come to the boil, go to the nearest shop and get as many bin liner bags as you can, at least one per monkey, preferably two ; then return home to the aroma of cooking monkey.

When you've got one of the monkeys thoroughly boiled, transfer it while still scorching hot into one of the bin liners, and tie the neck as tightly as possible. If you have enough bags, double bag it. Refill that pan with monkeys and water and continue cooking.

Lather, rinse, repeat until you have an apartment full of the aroma of dilute monkey soup, and sterile boiled bags of monkey. As long as the bags remain un-opened, the monkeys should remain sterile and not actually decompose further. Take them to the park, morning and evening and feed the local dogs - your monkey problem should be disposed of in a few months.

The same technique may be modified to dispose of inconvenient dead hookers, but you need to deal with troublesome easily-identified bones, particularly the long ones. Isn't there a Grand Theft Auto add-on for this? And aren't the GTA developers working on an Ebola-Zombie game too, where you dare not splatter blood or body fluids from the zombies?

Re:Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[cwsumner]

If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.

I don't think that they would necessary need to be declared legally competent persons, just because they were given personhood status. That being said, I think I agree with those who say that perhaps we need a new classification instead.

Note that the new classification would be very similar to Slavery. 8-P

New laws, to fix bad things, often end up being worse that what they were supposed to fix. And sometimes, even an old bad fix that was tried before.

Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's really fucked up when it's wrong to kill a remorseless murderer or imprison a chimp, but a baby can be coldly killed because they haven't taken a breath.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[spiritplumber]

I'll start being pro-life when the pro-life folk stop being anti-contraception.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[jedidiah]

The pro-life busybodies pretty much do everything they can to sabotage these "babies" once they have forced someone else to carry it to term.

They really are the ultimate hypocrites.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[lgw]

What does "pro-life" mean to you?

The majority of Americans, 58%, are pro-life if you take that to mean "abortion should be legal in only a few circumstances, or outright illegal" (only 39% support legal abortion in "all" or "most" circumstances). Very few of those 58% are "anti-contraception" as that's a fairly extreme religious view (even most Catholics don't buy it).

Your belief seems to be:
* Some people support X
* Some people who support X support Y
* Therefore, all who support X support Y

Which makes me wonder if you've ever even thought deeply about the issue.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[digsbo]

There are plenty of pro-life people who aren't anti-contraception. It is in no way shape or form a solid, unified group who all hold the same opinions.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[afgam28]

You're putting words in their mouth - no one is arguing that we should just coldly kill babies. This isn't about lowering babies, it's about improving the treatment of animals that are believed to have self-consciousness and the capacity to suffer from what we do to them.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

If the baby hasn't taken a breath, presumably it's already dead. Perhaps you meant a fetus?

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm generally pro-life in that:
a) Abortion should not be used as birth control in leiu of birth control pills, condoms, IUD's etc
b) Rape babies should be aborted. Period. Why force someone to endure that, only to have them be reminded of their rapist, or have the baby put in a foster home/adoption.

However:
- Abortion must not be used as a population control method (eg China's one-child policy)
- Abortion must not be used as a "get out of an accident free" option
- Abortion must not be used as a genetic control (oh this baby won't have blue eyes, kill it)

And I think a lot of the pro-life and pro-choice people actually agree on every point except, use different contexts to frame their arguments.

The catholics, jews, christians, muslims and other organized religious types believe that every sperm is sacred, so even rape babies, and medically questionable babies must be brought to term. These are the same crazies who believe that divorce is a moral sin, and but then engage in drinking binges.

Meanwhile you'll usually find that the average pro-choice person's only real bitching point about pro-lifer's is the religious angle. If you take the religious angle entirely out of the argument, you'll usually find that everyone actually agrees.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Trogre]

Congratulations on being moderated Insightful for that comment, but you're going to have to explain what the hell you're talking about.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[nedlohs]

Clearly they don't agree. There a re plenty of pro-choice people who believe:

* Abortion should always be available and without needing a reason.

That's not just "different contexts" from your view.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe abortion should be legal until the fetus is 18 years old and out of the house.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[lgw]

The catholics, jews, christians, muslims and other organized religious types believe that every sperm is sacred, so even rape babies, and medically questionable babies must be brought to term.

That's painting with a heck of a broad brush! That belief is rare among Catholics, and almost non-existent otherwise. Also, you forgot Hindus and Buddhists. (To judge by average age of lost virginity, Hindus are the most sexually uptight people on the planet.)

Meanwhile you'll usually find that the average pro-choice person's only real bitching point about pro-lifer's is the religious angle.

The world certainly would be a better place if people could overcome their blind, stupid prejudices.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a moment to actually read the references you cite. There were only three options in that poll; basically, abortion should be legal in (a) all circumstances (b) some circumstances (c) no circumstances. That poll is inherently biased toward choice b.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Trogre]

I'm pro-life and pro-contraception.

Would you like some leaflets to distribute now or would you prefer to use word of mouth?

Thanks.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[lgw]

There a re plenty of pro-choice people who believe:

* Abortion should always be available and without needing a reason.

28% of Americans, in fact, per that linked survey.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[gcnaddict]

Oh, that's easy.

Said right-wing groups choke money spent on education standards, teach everyone "abstinence only!" when it's not realistic, etc., which results in people having babies because they had unprotected sex and didn't have the education for how to use contraception. Now that babies are born to people who are poor and didn't have the education to know how to reduce the risk of babies from the one act that could take the stress out of their life, they also can't get welfare, medicaid, etc. because "they aren't carrying their fair share," which forces their kids through poverty, shitty education, a lack of contraception knowledge, more babies, and more kids forced through poverty.

Honestly, if hard-right-wingers just said "Hey, we believe abortion is wrong, but use contraception to greatly reduce the risk of having a baby!", they might've actually had some support! But their current stance is "you can't use contraception, and you must take care of anybody you bring into this world on your own. We know you can't help but have sex because it's wired into your brain but screw you anyway."

Independent voter here. I usually vote for moderate Republicans, Independents, or moderate Democrats.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pro-death. Killing 'em in the womb saves room in the death camps later.

Did I say death camps? I meant happy camps.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[x0ra]

The problem arises when the women end up being among the 1% statistical rate of an IUD failure, or the 20% failure rate of condoms. No matter what *you* think, it is none of your business to put any constrain on the women who's about to have her life fucked up by a baby she does not want.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[x0ra]

The whole question is actually, when does a gathering of cells legally become humans ? As said above, some religious extremists consider every spermatozoa is a human being. By that definition, given the litters of sperm I ejaculated in my sexual life, I am a mass-murderer.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm generally for birth control, and I certainly use it all the time. I understand the arguments made against it, but the reality is that no individual was harmed by its use, so I have no problem with it. The same simply cannot be said for abortions.

We're talking about the ability to extend "personhood" to animals by law. Its a good place to remind ourselves that we can remove personhood from humans with the same laws at our convenience. Our human rights do not exist in nature, they exist by the stroke of a pen, and even more on the willingness of most people to draw a line somewhere to protect people who are not ourselves or like ourselves.

In the case of abortion, it is easy to draw the line well after conception because we can demonstrate extreme inconvenience to some women and it's easy not to empathize with "a bunch of cells". Fair enough.

Still, the principle is the same. Unless there is a solid understanding of what our limits are as a society, they become whatever seems popular at the time. The results of conception are small, dependent on the mother, and not very pretty, but you can find no better scientific dividing line about where an individual starts than that.

No one wants to be cruel to a woman who has been raped, it's just that some solutions are no solution at all. I suppose I'd count it a victory if we stopped all abortions except for medical issues and rape cases, but I still can't help but remember that the human being killed is completely innocent of the crime perpetuated on his or her mother. It's a compromise that I understand why many people are unwilling to make. The reality is that we can easily justify the death of any person who makes us uncomfortable, or who has a dependence on another person, or who is in some other way inconvenient. Our willingness to accept inconvenience, even to extremes, for another person, defines our humanity.

Of course, legal abortion doesn't prevent anyone from working to make abortions unnecessary. I hope that perhaps the unfortunate legal availability of abortion drives people to find real solutions to the problems involved.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Your lucky your mom is pro-life and didn't abort her accident, or else you wouldn't be here to spew your liberal drivel.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[ihtoit]

here, I'll fuck your head up:

Until it has taken its first breath, a fetus has NO RIGHTS. It isn't even a person in the legal sense. It is an "event". A transient condition on a woman. Legally it is in the same class as a cancer. If a court decides it is to be forcibly removed and reared in a whitewall institute, there is NOTHING the mother can say, nothing ANYBODY can say on the matter, the decision is made and nobody can claim to represent the event's rights because a: it is not human and b: it has no rights.

source: vast legal experience including background in cases similar to the Paccieri baby snatch, where the fetus was taken to order to feed the adoption market.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact people can help having sex, and do so by the millions every day.

Re: Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

No better line? How about once the baby is viable? I'm 100% pro choice, right up to the start of trimester 2. Plenty of time to figure that out by 3 months in. My belief is kind of moot, though, since men really should not be allowed to participate in these decision, unless the woman you knocked up invites you to. It really is that simple.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[SuricouRaven]

The single most effective technique available to reduce the number of elective abortions would be to promote contraception, in both availability and education. It works - and works almost perfectly. It's the main reason that developed countries have such a low birth rate.

Yet if you look at very any organisation in the pro-life movement you'll find that, almost without exception, they are opposed to contraceptive education, and opposed to providing insurance coverage, and opposed to subsided provision. Many of them (Mostly the ones with Roman Catholic connections) go further than that, and openly consider the use of contraception to be inherently immoral and something that should be legally forbidden.

This contradiction indicates that for all of their rhetoric about the sanctity of life, they are far less concerned with opposing abortion than they are with reversing the sexual revolution and bringing back the natural consequence of pregnancy that once forced everyone to live by the code of their holy text.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[SuricouRaven]

It's rare among Catholics, but it's also the official position of the Catholic church. The discrepancy is quite simple: Most of the lay church members ignore almost everything their church teaches. It's a serious problem that the priests are still struggling with every day. Most of the church ignores their teaching, but if they try to get stricter about compliance they would lose far more members than they are willing to accept.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[SuricouRaven]

True.

But where are they in the organised pro-life movement? Absent. They have no role there. All of the prominent pressure groups - the FRC, FotF, Operation Rescue, the AFA, most if not all of the state-level 'family' groups, the Roman Catholic church - all of those oppose contraception as well. They make sure it stays this way by continuing to exclude anyone who does promote contraception. It's a political movement run by the hard-liners.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

We should just coldly kill babies, to practice our killing skills.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you think, but anonymous surveys show quite a different picture.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[markass530]

if very few of those are anti-contraception then why is abstinence-only education so prevalent?

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

And according to one survey, 11% or so of Americans couldn't find America on a map.

That nation is full of morons.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

it's quite clear, even in the context of this article...
(the article is about "beings" feeling pain and conscious about it)

so the necessary condition is, that
  the "gatherings of cells" needs to have a developed brain - cca after 3 months

this (3 months of pregnancy) is the usual upper level for allowing an abortion...

defining the start of life with start of brain functioning (brain activity), seems to be a good analogy with death:
when is a person declared dead in hospital? - No EEG - no brain activity...

But, analogically, as there are hopes for treating the dead bodies (even in cemeteries) with dignity, it is clear, that even "fetuses" with undeveloped brains should be treated with high dignity, and that artificial abortion should be only the last option...

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[misexistentialist]

The only contraception that really works is the kind out of the user's control and not dependent on education, i.e. either permanent sterilization or semi-permanent implants. The abortion industry is secretive so you don't have a profile of their customers, but there are plenty of college-educated non-believer women getting multiple abortions because they "forget" to use contraception that they got for free from taxpayers. After all the point of the sex drive is to produce babies, the disturbing reality is that abortion is women's preferred form of birth control, the only way you can stop this is with less "choice"

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing that you stated is true.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why dont they force the party platform to reflect their views instead of the other?
and why dont they vote in support of those views instead of the other?
you can say they exist all you want, but until they make themselves heard, they may as well not.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Major Blud]

So if the father didn't want the baby, but the woman did, he shouldn't have to pay child support, right?

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[laie_techie]

I'll start being pro-life when the pro-life folk stop being anti-contraception.

I'm all for preventing conception (the pill, condoms, surgeries, etc), but firmly believe that once fertilization takes place the zygote should be protected in most cases (one obvious exception is a pregnancy resulting from rape). Only subgroups in the pro-life camp (such as the Catholic Church) speak out against contraception. Even though I use contraceptives myself, I believe that students be taught that abstinence is the only contraceptive method which is 100% effective all the time. Teach the risks of each method (for example, a small number of condoms tear) so students can make an informed decision. Don't use scare tactics or guilt trips.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

No, "every sperm is sacred" is not even remotely the position of the Catholic Church.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[lgw]

Because it's pretty normal for parents to believe their kids are perfect angels?

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellow independent voter here, to point out that they've set up tons of organizations set up to help people with accidental babies, they're usually called crisis pregnancy centers or similar. From what I've seen, the scenarios where people end up having unplanned sex aren't ones where they would have contraception handy to begin with, and not planning to have sex isn't as difficult as people make it out to be ... we're on Slashdot, this place is just about made of 30-40 year old virgins.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you be so quick to excuse one wrong to alleviate another? The rules given are time-tested means of having healthy relationships and ensuring that children have proper support.

As with any moral code, it's trivial to find people who have failed to live up to it and I suspect that would be the next response, but it's not really fair to judge the rules by people who never followed them to begin with.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[cyberchondriac]

Oh, that's easy. because they had unprotected sex and didn't have the education for how to use contraception.

Independent voter here. I usually vote for moderate Republicans, Independents, or moderate Democrats.

Politically, I'm probably similar to you, (personally I lean slightly right yet am not pro-life, and anti-contraception is just insanely stupid, but hey, catholics) but I never got why using contraception requires special education and how that's an excuse. How friggin' hard is it to put on a condom, insert a diaphragm, or get birth control pills from a doctor? That requires lessons??
Or is that someone is that clueless or stupid that they are totally unaware that sex can cause pregnancy- in which case we may have even more serious problems. You'd have to be cut off from the Internet, TV, classmates and friends, and live in a bubble. I don't buy it. I don't think the problem is (lack of) education, it's just simple willful disregard. And to be fair, I remember well what raging hormones feels like, so I can sort of understand how the heat of the moment trumps their better sense in some cases.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also worth noting that many so-called "pro-lifers" are very much in favor of the death penalty. "Anti abortion" just sounds too negative for their marketing purposes I guess.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[TemporalBeing]

Now that babies are born to people who are poor

One problem...pro-lifers advocate giving the children up for adoption instead of killing the child in-utero. In other words, responsibility after birth as well.

On the other hand, abortions have nothing to do with the health and safety of the mother - it's medically proven that that is not the case, both physically and psychologically - except in extreme cases that most pro-lifers would still allow abortions to occur under. The big issue comes down the embroynic stem cells that are generated and the inability to get them from pretty much any other source.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to go to a public school and get lessons in a classroom to learn about sex, you're doing it wrong.

Jokes aside, it really is a parent's responsibility to teach their children about sex. If the parent wants, teach moral abstinence, or teach immoral licentiousness, or teach neutral informed choice. Up to the family.
It isn't the responsibility of the school board.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[TemporalBeing]

Just playing devil's advocate, but you need to look at the medical information out there...

b) Rape babies should be aborted. Period. Why force someone to endure that, only to have them be reminded of their rapist, or have the baby put in a foster home/adoption.

Because as medical and psychological studies have proven it is healthier for the mother.

Abortion has a very nasty depression side-effect psychologically.

Abortion is almost always not safe to perform outside of the early cases like the morning-after pill.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Trogre]

Interesting.

So your position is that a woman should have the right to kill her offspring if it is convenient for her to do so. Now I assume that you don't think that anyone else should have the right to kill her offspring if they wish to.

Therefore your argument boils down to the belief that the life of a child has no value unless the mother says it does.

No matter what *you* think, that is a deplorably barbaric position.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[digsbo]

Haven't you already noticed how weak social conservatism is getting in the GOP? Many, many people have abandoned that mode of thinking. It's one of the reasons the GOP continues to lose even in the face of the pro-war, pro-bank Democrats: The fiscal conservatives and genuinely small government (even out-of-the-bedroom, anti-war small government) are splintering off from the necons and religious right, and choosing to lose to Democrats instead. Lots of people under 40 who are fiscal conservatives, anti-police state, anti-war, and have no issues at all with social liberalism are continuing not to vote for the extreme right wing.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you've thought this through?

You object to abortion for population control or "get out of an accident free", yet you claim no problem with terminating a "rape baby".

Why is that?

Let's take a look shall we?

The catholics, jews, christians, muslims and other organized religious types believe that every sperm is sacred, so even rape babies, and medically questionable babies must be brought to term.

Almost. I think you'll find those groups hold that every fertilized egg is sacred. Perhaps you're thinking of Monty Python?

These are the same crazies who believe that divorce is a moral sin, and but then engage in drinking binges.

False, but a nice strawman for you to knock down anyway.

Meanwhile you'll usually find that the average pro-choice person's only real bitching point about pro-lifer's is the religious angle. If you take the religious angle entirely out of the argument, you'll usually find that everyone actually agrees.

Again, false. The pro-life position is that human life has some defined intrinsic value. Whether that life was made by rape, IVF, or some extra-marital affair is irrelevant - the kid has already been made. The question is what to do with it.

My point is this: If you hold that human life has intrinsic value then you will not be so quick to support aborting rape babies. This is an important point that a lot of people miss. Pro-lifers are often painted as desiring to tell women what to do with their bodies when, from their point of view, there is already a life in jeopardy, which outweighs convenience.

If you do not believe that human life has intrinsic value, then you should have no problem with mothers terminating babies at any stage of their development, born or otherwise, for whatever reason. You may also believe that a rape baby that is carried to term for whatever reason can still be killed at any time while they are still under their mothers care (age 21 in the US is it?) if the mother changes her mind and no longer wishes to keep it, since you have already suggested that a rape baby is of less value than a more "legitimate" one.

False dichotomy? Perhaps, but I would be grateful if you would point out any other defensible positions on the matter.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Most pro-life Catholics are NOT in favour of the death penalty.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole question is actually, when does a gathering of cells legally become humans ? As said above, some religious extremists consider every spermatozoa is a human being. By that definition, given the litters of sperm I ejaculated in my sexual life, I am a mass-murderer.

Which is exactly what they see you as, I'm sure!

The subject becomes even more complicated than that when one considers just how many cells die off and get replaced over the course of a few years, or entertain questions like, "If someone eats a piece of chicken, at what point does that food stop being a chicken and start being the person who ate it?"

They'll have rights

[msobkow]

They'll have rights as soon as they can hold down jobs to feed themselves.

Re:They'll have rights

[markass530]

You just pulled the rights from a a metric fuck ton of mentally & physically handicapped people

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't hold blacks to such a standard.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of animal personhood, seems we have a cockroach with the right to vote in our midst here. ^

Re:They'll have rights

[jedidiah]

Plenty of mentally and physically handicapped people hold down jobs of varying levels of sophistication.

On the other hand, if you can't fend for yourself then you should have fewer rights and probably should be treated as a child. Things like mental competence are important as they are a measure of how much of a threat you are to yourself and those around you.

If you need the supervision of a toddler or an infant, you probably shouldn't be treated like an adult.

This is one key feature of non-defective humans. Eventually you can safely let them off their leash.

Re:They'll have rights

[drinkypoo]

On the other hand, if you can't fend for yourself then you should have fewer rights and probably should be treated as a child.

Which rights do you propose to take away from the highly physically disabled?

Re:They'll have rights

[martas]

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. 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?

Re:They'll have rights

[killhour]

I'm not sure if you're arguing that we should perform invasive and many times lethal scientific experiments on the severely mentally disabled and young children. Because that's the kind of rights we're talking about, here.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

So human babies don't have rights?

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if you can't fend for yourself then you should have fewer rights and probably should be treated as a child.

perhaps you meant fewer privileges, not fewer rights?

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

handicapped people are still genetically humans. Typical members of their species are capable of holding jobs, so the handicapped ones inherit their personhood from the group.

In the cases of mental handicaps, sometimes such people are not accorded all the rights of personhood, precisely because they can't live up to the responsibilities.

But....jobs or no jobs.....animals cannot speak intelligently about personhood or ask for their freedom (in a clear way that demonstrates understanding of the concept). Humans can. This fact is what will actually drive the decision (which will be, "not persons" as it always has been).

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest giving Peter Singer's Practical Ethics a read, deals very well with this subject.

Re:They'll have rights

[mysidia]

You just pulled the rights from a a metric fuck ton of mentally & physically handicapped people

I think he's talking about the species as a whole, not individuals.... but you could say

The individual chimp will have rights as soon as they can hold down jobs to feed themselves OR one of their family members/parents/ancestors, or their tribal government can.

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:They'll have rights

[martas]

I'm not sure whether or not you think you're disagreeing with me... What I wrote was meant to be a rebuttal for GP.

Re:They'll have rights

[ClickOnThis]

Sorry. I'm not disagreeing with you, and regret that it seems like I am. I join with you in rebutting the OP.

In short, I'm on your side. I just found that what I wanted to say fit well as a reply to your post.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

And minorities. That is what this is really about. The Republicans want to take rights from blacks. Because most young black men are not allowed jobs, according to msobkow, they're not people.

Re:They'll have rights

[Dynedain]

There is a spectrum of opinion [wikipedia.org] 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.

After seeing cats toy with mice to levels that would unquestionably be considered torture by every nation on Earth if a human was the victim, I have come to the conclusion that "animal rights" is inherently fictitious. Much like "innate rights" or "inalienable rights" for humans, we are merely appeasing our culturally-developed sense of morality, ethics, and guilt.

That's not to say those motivating factors aren't good things. In fact, quite the opposite. Clearly there is an evolutionary advantage to social cooperation and baseline rules of morality, otherwise we would not have developed these sociological phenomenon, let alone have the capacity to articulate and discuss them.

More tangibly, this reluctance to abuse other species with certain characteristics is what lead to the domestication of cooperatively useful species (dogs, cats, cattle, etc). But our moral compulsion should not be mistaken for some sort of universally true innate "right".

Re:They'll have rights

[ihtoit]

the British Government already did that with the institution of the Court of Protection: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...

Re:They'll have rights

[ihtoit]

until they take their first breath, nope.

Re:They'll have rights

[KarmaPolice]

Would it count as jobs if they made money as research chimps? ...oh wait...

Re:They'll have rights

[pspahn]

You might just wait a few months then.

Amendment 67 in Colorado is a personhood bill that actually has some support this year. I remember when they were collecting signatures and I saw loads of people signing it that had no idea of the ramifications.

Ask the average nitwit if, "a pregnant woman is hit by a drunk driver, should there be two counts of manslaughter?" The knee-jerk response is "well that at least seems reasonable". That is how they worded it to people. Only by reading the proposal will you see how transparently they're trying to make abortion illegal.

Re:They'll have rights

[msobkow]

Gee, talk about jumping to erroneous conclusions. The majority of humanity supports itself. Those who can't are the exception, and are still human.

Chimps that could hold down jobs, on the other hand, would be exceedingly rare and would be the exceptional cases (if there are any at all.)

As to the racists who jumped on my post: You people are sick degenerates from the shallowest end of the gene pool and should be flushed from the bowels of humanity.

Re:They'll have rights

[SuricouRaven]

The problem with people who honestly believe that they are fighting for a just and vital cause is that they will go to any length of deception and legal trickery to achieve it. The ends justify the means. If the only way to save babies is to subvert the legal process, then it would be unethical not to do so.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad that the internet is now at the point where we assume replies are going to be arguments and not agreements.

Re:They'll have rights

[CrimsonAvenger]

Ask the average nitwit if, "a pregnant woman is hit by a drunk driver, should there be two counts of manslaughter?" The knee-jerk response is "well that at least seems reasonable"

Personally, I think that in the case you describe, the charges should be one count of manslaughter and one count of performing an abortion without a license.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Animals have a weaker right not to suffer; animal suffering can be legally justified by a sufficient benefit to humans. And that's a pretty low bar. For instance, there's a lot of unnecessary animal tests for chemical safety where in-vitro tests have already produced reasonable approximations. We don't need LD50 figures in 3 significant digits. Suffering of humans is justified in entirely different cases, for instance terminal diseases where human euthanasia is banned. Would personhood for Chimps ban them from euthanasia?

As for the distinction between laws and rights, the theoretical idea behind laws is that they exist to assure rights, especially where those rights are potentially in conflict. Legal personhood would mean chimp rights would be protected by force of law.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Rosa Parks about defying/subverting bad laws for the overall public good. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that you're probably a democrat and thus undeniably a racist.

Re: They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

In vitro tests are not an adequate replacement for animal tests. Hell, multiple animal tests with different species are not an adequate replacement for human trials. Researchers are not killing animals for fun - they cost much more money and time than testing a plate of HeLa cells.

Re:They'll have rights

[luis_a_espinal]

Plenty of mentally and physically handicapped people hold down jobs of varying levels of sophistication.

On the other hand, if you can't fend for yourself then you should have fewer rights and probably should be treated as a child.

Barring voting and access to booze, smokes and pr0n, I didn't know that children had less rights than adults. Who knew?

Re:They'll have rights

[almitydave]

It's sad that the internet is now at the point where we assume replies are going to be arguments and not agreements.

Wait... when wasn't it?

Re:They'll have rights

[almitydave]

There is a spectrum of opinion [wikipedia.org] 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.

More tangibly, this reluctance to abuse other species with certain characteristics is what lead to the domestication of cooperatively useful species (dogs, cats, cattle, etc). But our moral compulsion should not be mistaken for some sort of universally true innate "right".

It seems like these questions are at the forefront more and more these days: what is a right, where do they come from, and how do we know? And your comment touches on another very important point relevant to this thread: animals do have jobs, we just don't pay them a salary beyond food and care. Think of animals in agriculture and transportation, hunters' assistants, seeing-eye dogs and other service animals. Heck, they're even actors. Animals can be said to have jobs in the same way humans do, and in fact we've been working hand-in-paw with them for as long as we can remember.

I know some animal-rights organizations love to call these types of animals "slaves" but there's clearly something different between humans and animals. It just becomes very difficult to pin it down as something other than a matter of degree when we don't even clearly understand the nature of our own consciousness.

Personally, I don't believe animals have rights - I do however believe that we have responsibilities toward the animals, and are under moral obligation not to cause undue suffering. Experimenting on animals is therefore ethically a very sticky area.

BTW, there's a very good graphic novel about Laika that's historically accurate, based on information that became declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union. It's targeted toward adolescents, but worth a read.

Re:They'll have rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another drinkypoo strawman. But I'll bite.

Their rights have already been de facto curtailed by the inability to exercise them, so it's a moot point. Blind people cannot watch the sunset. Deaf people cannot mix records. Nobody has to tell them they can't do those things; it's just their reality.

Conversely, where physical handicaps can be compensated for, then the restriction is overcome, and there's no need to artificially enforce it. If an alternative input mechanism allows a quadriplegic to drive, then there's no need to restrict them from driving.

Re:They'll have rights

[ihtoit]

I'm with you on that. Maybe we should ask Ted Kennedy, who seems more than qualified to comment having performed a 118th trimester abortion himself on Mary Jo Kopechne.

Re:They'll have rights

[drinkypoo]

if you can't fend for yourself then you should have fewer rights and probably should be treated as a child.

Which rights do you propose to take away from the highly physically disabled?

Yet another drinkypoo strawman.

People who are highly physically disabled cannot fend for themselves. By the above statement, they "should" have fewer rights — what purpose does "should" serve here except to deny rights which they possibly could have, as opposed to things which you mistake for rights like sight or vision. Guess what? No one has the right to sight or vision. You have the right not to be blinded or made deaf, and if someone does cause one of those things to happen to you, you have the right to seek redress.

Nobody has to tell them they can't do those things; it's just their reality.

And yet, none of those things are rights.

In particular, no distinction is being drawn between natural rights and legal rights. Personally, I don't believe in natural rights. There are no such things. Absent a right to life which you clearly do not have (everything dies, or can die) in any sense (our government terminates people's lives all the time, which puts the absolute lie to the idea of a "right to life" in any legal context) you really have no other rights. Thus, the only rights you have are those which are legally guaranteed and then in fact legally protected. Not as a concept, but in fact; the legal system must act to protect those rights if you are to claim to have them. Every single so-called right in the bill of rights can now be denied under the authority of one or more obscenely obviously unconstitutional bodies of law like the U SAP AT RIOT act or NDAA. But I digress.

The question remains, of which rights should the severely physically disabled be deprived? Because clearly nobody was suggesting that we ought to bend 100% of the output of our civilization to bring sight to the blind before solving any other problems. The only reason to suggest that people who cannot fend for themselves (which includes the set "severely physically disabled people") "should" have less rights than other people is if you have some rights in mind of which they should be deprived.

Re:They'll have rights

[david_thornley]

If abortions are murder, then any miscarriage or stillbirth should be investigated to some extent, and if found to be related to negligent the non-mother would be guilty of negligent homicide. It would be illegal to perform an abortion even to save the life of the mother.

Philosophically, I have no justification for treating a fetus as a human iff the mother wants to, but it seems to yield results I find reasonable.

Life imitating Art

[techno-vampire]

The idea of a chimp, or other primate being intelligent enough to be considered human isn't new. Heinlein covered it back in 1947 in Jerry Was a Man. If you haven't read it yet, you really need to before discussing this article any further.

Re:Life imitating Art

[c6gunner]

Difference being that Jerry was modified. If we can ever uplift chimps to that level, granting them "human" rights will be a no-brainer. Sci-fi in general has done a lot of hand-wringing over such questions (see Data's trial in ST:TNG) but given the current zeitgeist I couldn't ever see it being an issue. The day a chimp can walk up to me and say "Hi, I'm Jerry, could you please stop experimenting on me?" is the day he gets the full protection of our laws. Until then it's always going to be a fringe issue.

Re:Life imitating Art

[Barsteward]

it could also be earlier than that... Napoleonic Wars for example... http://www.thisishartlepool.co...

Re:Life imitating Art

[Anonymous Coward]

The day a chimp can walk up to me and say "Hi, I'm Jerry, could you please stop experimenting on me?" is the day he gets the full protection of our laws.

To be fair, many human children (and some adults!) cannot do that and they still get the full protection of our laws. An average chimp is at least as intelligent and self-aware as an average human toddler.

Re:Life imitating Art

[Anonymous Coward]

No I don't.

Re:Life imitating Art

[c6gunner]

To be fair, many human children (and some adults!) cannot do that and they still get the full protection of our laws. An average chimp is at least as intelligent and self-aware as an average human toddler.

That may be true, but we know that humans as a species are relatively intelligent and self-aware, even if not all individuals are. If there comes a day when we can say the same thing about chimps, all of them will receive rights/protection even if some of them don't meet those criteria.

Human laws?

[Travis Mansbridge]

Most chimpanzees would likely end up right back in prison on destruction of property laws, among other things.

Re:Human laws?

[x0ra]

You're not getting it, these "rights" would be one way only, and come with no responsibilities.

Re:Human laws?

[Sloppy]

IMHO that's an excellent way of looking at it. If the chimp can persuade reasonable people that he can be trusted to not do that, he has a pretty good chance of being treated as though he does have rights. And anyone (chimp or otherwise) who persuades people otherwise, might find themselves being treated as though they don't have rights. (Shame about all the communications problems and other errors that happen in that second scenario, but it .. mostly works. Mostly.)

Re:Human laws?

[Darinbob]

The story is hyped up. If they win the lawsuit, the chimpanzee would not be "freed" and allowed to roam the streets, instead it will be held in captivity in a chimpanzee habitat/sanctuary.

Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, if they are a person, can you marry one? If not, why?

Re:Can you marry one?

[mjm1231]

There are lots of humans you can't legally marry. They pretty much all have one thing in common: they can't legally give consent.

Also, you really shouldn't look at your sister that way.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

To consent to marriage, a person needs to understand what marriage even is, yes? Same reason we don't allow children to marry.

And I sincerely hope this wasn't you trying to make some sort of commentary on gay marriage.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Also, you really shouldn't look at your sister that way.

This sister stuff is all you, man.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can't give consent, are they really a "person"?

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

To consent to marriage, a person needs to understand what marriage even is, yes? Same reason we don't allow children to marry.

No. The real reason you people don't allow children to marry is because your menfolk like to fornicate with young girls. If your womenfolk marry early than there would be much less girls available for your menfolk to fornicate with.

Re:Can you marry one?

[MightyMartian]

In virtually ever jurisdiction in the industrialized world children under a certain age cannot give consent for a variety of activities; sexual intercourse, signing contracts, medical treatments, etc. That a nine year old cannot consent to having sex or signing a contract doesn't mean they aren't a person. Personhood alone doesn't afford all rights and privileges, but it does guarantee the basic liberties.

I can imagine animals like chimps, dolphins and elephants being granted personhood under the law, but being that they do not have the cognitive and rational capacities of humans (well, I'm not so sure about elephants, there is something kind of spooky about them in the intelligence and emotional departments), they might hold those basic liberties in the same way that a child, a mentally ill person or a severely mentally handicapped person might. They couldn't sign contracts independent of a guardian, they couldn't be given the vote, but they would be protected from egregious violations of their basic civil liberties.

Re:Can you marry one?

[x0ra]

The definition of "consent" is not universal... for better or for worst.

Re:Can you marry one?

[0123456]

So, when a killer whale eats a dolphin, are you going to take it to court for violating their civil liberties?

Re:Can you marry one?

[soccerisgod]

The same way a child or an mentally ill would.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if the crime happens on soil. If it is committed in the ocean that's Poseidon's jurisdiction and there's nothing we can do.

Re:Can you marry one?

[LWATCDR]

But then would a human and a chimp have the right to get married?

Re:Can you marry one?

[LWATCDR]

Actually it would be murder.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha wow, here I thought there might have been a chance you were a real person. Why don't you go and kill yourself? End the miserable shitstain on society that is your life. Fucked-up retards like you will die out within the generation anyway, might as well be ahead of the curve, right? ;)

PS I'm not gonna waste one more second reading your shit, no need to bother replying.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're going to institutionalize all of them because they can't function in society?

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you see blackfish, man?

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because at that point we are still imposing our own human laws onto the behavior of non-humans. Would we be having this conversation if the creatures in question were not able to be defeated and subjugated by humans? We can still respect all animals and their right to coexist peacefully alongside us without being below us, just like a fictional alien race with capabilities matching or exceeding our own.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

And /thread. Law and government are over guys, there's no universal definition of consent.

Re:Can you marry one?

[Anonymous Coward]

So as long as the person who rapes a child is mentally ill (e.g. a pedophile) then it's ok? Got it! That's all I needed to hear from you.

On Grounds of Standing Alone....

[maz2331]

...this case should have been tossed. One can't file on behalf of another (unless they are a legal guardian or hold a power of attorney), and the plaintiffs also can't show any personal harm to themselves.

If they feel strongly enough about the issue, the remedy is political. Convince enough people that 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of state legislatures will agree, and pass a Constitutional amendment.

Re:On Grounds of Standing Alone....

[martas]

Heh, well, what if the plaintiff acquired one of the animals formerly kept in captivity by someone else? Would they then be a legal guardian?

Re:On Grounds of Standing Alone....

[Krishnoid]

One can't file on behalf of another (unless they are a legal guardian or hold a power of attorney), and the plaintiffs also can't show any personal harm to themselves.

They had standing due to special circumstances; in this situation they were allowed to file the case pro-bono(bo).

Re:On Grounds of Standing Alone....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's begging the question. You're attempting to establish the chimp is capable (needing?) of needing legal guardianship in the first place.

I hate every ape I see...

[zawarski]

...from chimpan-a to chimpan-zee!

Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean I really love my chimp. Fucking fascists want to keep man / chimp love from flourishing. For all you faggots who say I shouldn't be allowed to marry my chimpanzee just because a chimpanzee can not talk and is not smart enough to give consent, I say fuck you. Democrats are getting married all the time and their not as smart ans chimpanzees. If you ever saw me and my chimpanzee together you would know it is love for sure. If Chimpanzees can go into space and become an integral part of our medical establishment (drug testing) surely they should be allowed to enter into matrimony. If two dudes can get married, why can't I marry my chimpanzee, or anything else for the matter. You know what else I really love. I love my truck. Maybe I can marry my truck. Decisions decisions, Do I love my truck more than my chimpanzee, or do I love my chimpanzee more than my truck. Which one will stick by me? One thing I do know is I can not marry both, because that would be polygamy, and that would be disgusting and immoral.

-Hate is not a family value. But insanity sure the fuck is.

Re:Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[sillybilly]

I think marriage is not the core issue here, but biotech and medical research is. Such as rhesus monkey head transplant http://youtu.be/NJE7IRK7k7Y or even http://youtu.be/K_T8OuYIfhM keeping a dog head alive without its body. Sick sick stuff. It's like in medical and biotech science anything goes, in the name of scientific knowledge and aid to survive. I guess if you and your friend were in a car accident, and one has the head totally smashed but the body alive, the other has the head intact but the body totally smashed, you might be able to combine the two and keep one organism alive that way, and if you asked that new "person" if he wanted to stay alive like that, he'd probably say yes. Still, sick sick sick.

Re:Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[x0ra]

Beside pure moral grounds, if the knowledge to succeed the transplant is there, why not ?

Re:Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[sillybilly]

How would you like to be abducted by higher intelligence aliens and played with your head cut off like that? Submit yourself to the interests of science and higher knowledge, because you're not as intelligent as they are, huh? Do unto others as thou would have them do unto thee, and this includes lower intelligence lifeforms. When a bobcat hunts a deer, there is something holy about that, it maintains genetic health for the deer, it kills very kosher, as quick and painless and efficient as its means allow (in the game of Age of Empires classic, when a soldier kills a beast you don't get any meat from that, presumably it's not kosher, but when a hunter, and interestingly, when a lion kills a deer, you get edible meat from that that you can take to your storage pits.) The cat also kills to survive only, and if one arises that destroys senselessly, or tortures the prey without killing it fast, without giving it a chance to escape, for no reason other than just sick joy of sadism, the bacteria and fungi in it will quickly make it sick and kill it off, there is nothing worse than a top predator that does not respect the ways of God - I've seen a domestic cat eaten alive by maggots before - , and usually does not get out of hand on population, unlike on some semi-deserted islands where it's not a native species, and the resident lifeforms have not built up skill and defense against cats, and cats grow out of control and devastate local genetic diversity. I love all cats the most out of all animals in the world, but when they get so out of hand on population and become so destructive of genetic variability, I see no problem in extermination programs with feral populations that got out of control. However if the feral cats are small in number, and live in sort of a happy balance, I'd stick up for their right to be. Similar is the situation in Australia with feral cats driving marsupial mice to extinction. Similar is the situation with mosquitoes in the old country, where I caught like 100 each night before going to sleep with a clear plastic jar, and smacked them around in the jar, and I'd end up with like a fistful of mosquito carcasses each evening after like 20 minutes of hunting, and even then when I went to bed, I'd have to rig a mummy-like sleep setup, in the middle of the hot summer, where I'd put a pillow on my head, and a bed sheet stretched from the head to the toe tight, with ample filtering area and breathing space under it. Sometimes I would not move around all night and wake up in the same position I'd gone to sleep in, and in the morning light you'd wake up to seeing little mosquito suckers sticking through the bed sheet, pulled back stuck through a different spot, probing, they could sense the body infrared heat under the sheets, and they could smell the CO2 I exhaled, but I would not have a single mosquito bite by the morning, unlike when I tossed around, and removed the bedsheet from my head, where I'd end up with at least 25 mosquito bites each morning all over my arms and face, even after I hunted every single one I could find on the walls with the plastic jar. Not one mosquito ran from the plastic jar, it's like they can't see it at all if it's clear plastic, only hear the thud when the lip closes around them on the wall and fly deep into the jar. It was like a really boring and mundane chore each evening, and no insect repellent sprays like DEET did not really help. I felt sick a bit from them and I'd still wake up with a bunch of mosquito bites. I had no problem killing mosquitoes under such circumstances of overabundance, but where I live now, I have not seen mosquitoes for years, except out in the countryside, and if I catch one inside, in the city, with a glass or plastic jar, I toss it outside the window and let it go. Find something else to suck blood from, bitch. I feel for you, that's how you have to make a living, but leave me out of it please. But if it's biting me and I go ouch, I have no problem slapping the fuck out of it even if it leaves a bloodstain on my clothes. Other than that, if the

Re:Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you also against organ transplants and other medical procedures that replace parts of the body?
When your friend gets a new knee will you still be friends with that new "person"?

Re:Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beside pure moral grounds, if the knowledge to succeed the transplant is there, why not ?

Beside pure moral grounds

oh ok robot. Moral grounds are probably the first and last reason to do anything. Or not do anything

Re:Can I marry My Chimpanzee now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if someone gets a metal knee, ankle. or even an organ harvested from another person, it's still the same mind. But when they get a head transplant from the neck up, you're no longer talking to your old buddy, but a different person with a different mind and different memories. They are totally different situations. In fact I would say your buddy would stay the same person as long as the brain stayed intact and not psychologically fucked by the procedures, and every other body part exchanged, including eyes and spinal chord. That's what we're talking about, head or brain transplants. You wanna get one? It's a whole lot different than a kidney transplant, I can tell you that. You WILL become a different, new person. Perhaps, if after enough tinkering they'll figure out what makes the brain tick, and with all the chip implants, it might be possible to hijack other people's bodies and download your mind into their brain, erase their mind and take over the body, and this way 80+ year old rich men can buy a young slave and transpose themselves into him, keep their minds and memories but exchange their bodies for a younger one, and do it every time they get old, and sort of live on, forever, at the expense of killing a poor boy here and there. How about breeding one in a dish, from your own sperm and an egg you purchased somewhere, keeping it in sensory isolation and artificial coma stasis, so it never fully develops language or motor skills, so it's just a zombie vegetable but genetically still half you, maybe other half some close relative, and your mind live on forever like that, by "molting", exchanging bodies for younger ones. Ah, the wonders of biotechnology coming right up your alley for you, the possibilities are limitless. Which is why the world economy is going to crash before such things really happen. Plus grass cutting and spraying Monsanto glyphosate weed killer everwhere, that hurts the wilderness genetic variability like nothing else on this planet everywhere brainwashed people go. Weed killer and pesticides are for farm use, food growing and food protection, not perverted uses such as creating an ugly fucking "lawn" that pleases the idiot's eyes. Everywhere I look I'm surrounded by retarded idiots who keep wasting their precious time and precious gasoline on guess what? Mowing lawns and exterminating "weeds". They are the fucking genetic weeds and waste that need extermination, not the wild plants and animals that depend on them, that have been around for hundreds of millions of years just fine, until these supposedly smart apes called humans showed up on the scene, and poisoned the fuck out of them deliberately, without any other benefit than simple "beauty." Fucking green deserts as far as the eye can see, very low genetic variability, and no flowers. "Beautiful" fucking lawns everywhere. Then they wonder how the greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, and talk about carbon tax, like total fucktards, when all they gotta do to absorb and store a whole lot of that carbon is allow their fucking 2 inch thick lawns to grow two foot thick. Retards retards everywhere. I'm surrounded by idiots. The voices tell me, that when the virus plagues come, who will be immune, or a great bio-effort spent on saving them. We still got almost a decade of good life though, with a good probability. But eventually things come due, and shit has to go down the way it has to go down, because people are not willing to adapt and listen. You can speak your breath dry against 13 year old teenage motherhood, but the fact is it's never gonna stick, people gonna breed out of control on welfare money as long as it's available, and the system is going to collapse under the burden, sooner or later. There is no way convincing people not to fuck. No way in the entire Universe, and to every action, there are consequences. Another huge danger is artificial intelligence, which cannot be allowed, and advances in that are perhaps the strongest signals of when the shit is gonna hit the fan, before it gets out of hand too much.

Yours &c,
sillybilly
(slashdot only lets me post 2 or less per 24 hrs with a terrible karma)

Stupid

[uvajed_ekil]

This is soooo stupid! Everyone knows that the only thing we define as "people" are humans. And corporations.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This is soooo stupid! Everyone knows that the only thing we define as "people" are humans. And corporations.

Maybe they can form a corporation of Chimpanzees

Re:Stupid

[Kekke]

It's called The Planet of The Apes You know....

Good news for the major political parties

[caseih]

Now if we can just get them all to sign up and donate money.

OP Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro-life, don't give a shit about contraception, don't believe in magical sky fairy, or any magic at all. I most certainly don't believe that getting pushed out the birth canal magically makes someone a person.

Not until they can put on a suit of clothes

[jpellino]

and argue their own case in court. Next question.

Re:Not until they can put on a suit of clothes

[MightyMartian]

There are plenty of people who appear before the courts who cannot argue their own cases. In fact, most Common Law jurisdictions have individuals called Public Trustees (or a similar office) who are charged with representing those who, because they are not deemed capable of representing themselves in court, still may need access to the judicial system. Surely granting basic liberties to other sentient creatures could be modeled on the same legal structures we put in place to protect children and the mentally incapacitated.

Re:Not until they can put on a suit of clothes

[Anonymous Coward]

So that includes millions of humans too! Well done! Let's start experimenting on the young and handicapped and treating them just as inhumane.

Re:Not until they can put on a suit of clothes

[jpellino]

That model begs the question - in that it presupposes a chimp and a child or a mentally incapacitated person somehow have a common legal standing, given only that they share a limited level of communication skills. Equating the smartest chimp with the most limited-cognition human doesn't create a tenable argument. They are still chimps, not one of which is discussing personhood. The others are still humans, all of whom - absent limiting pathology - are capable of considering this discussion. The term "sentient" is the giant wiggly one here. Protect them and allow them to live as they should? Sure. Grant them the standing of a person? Unsustainable and superfluous. So - when a chimp lawyer can figure out how to do it for Chimp Doe, call me. Until then, still no.

The Chim Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

why were so many niggers killed in the Vietnam war??

because when the sergeant said to "get down", they all got up and started dancing.

What does a nigress and an ice hockey player have in common?
They both change their pads after 3 periods

What did God say when he made the first niggers?
Oops! Burnt another one!

A Mexican and a nigger are riding in car . . who's driving?
A cop!

What happens when you stick your hand in a jar of jelly beans?
The black ones steal your watch and rings.

  What do you call a smiling black man?

Snigger

What's black and white and rolls down the Boardwalk?

A nigger and a seagull fighting over a French Fry.

Why are niggers like sperm?

Only 1 in a Million actually works

What do black men do after sex?

15 years to life.

Did you hear about the 9 year old African nigglet?

He was going through a mid-life crisis.

What's the difference between a black and a white fairytale?

White begins, "once upon a time," black begins, "y'all motherfuckers ain't gonna believe dis shit!"

What's the difference between a nigger and a snow tire?
A snow tire doesn't sing when you put chains on it.

What would you call the Flintstones if they were black?
Niggers.

Re:The Chim Thing

[Barsteward]

oh dear... a cockroach has escaped and is typing in /.

Can they form corporations?

[istartedi]

Can they form corporations? That's where it gets really interesting.

But?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Have we forgotten dogs and cats? Shouldn't they have the right to sleep together?

Obama Got Columbia Pun-Tang

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama got sa Pun-Tang Obama got sa Pun-Tang Obama got sa Pun-Tang.

I guess that his marriage to Michael (i.e. Michelle after sex change and chemo-therapy) is not going so well.

Ha ha

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/aides-despite-denials-knew-of-white-house-tie-to-cartagena-prostitution-scandal/2014/10/08/5b98dc90-4e7e-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html

Tax Time

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume that once they are declared persons that they then become liable for taxes?
This may solve some of our economic issues!

Apes are Persons Eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, those hairy anarchists can get a job! I know they've been hiding the fact they can't speak plain English 'cause they don't wanna pay taxes!

Cool

[Greyfox]

10000 Quatloos to the first person to gay marry a chimpanzee.

SystemD Support?

[dnebin]

If the chimps are given personhood, will they back the systemd movement? I'd hate to see a chimp war started over whether systemd is good or evil...

simple test

[ihtoit]

they already do this for humans: mental capacity.

It's a legal test: if the subject is found capable of litigating for himself, then he is "granted" the opportunity to assert his rights - which, it would then be assumed, he is aware of. If he is found not to be capable (which is the point of the test - it is not intended to find capacity, it is intended to find lack of capacity), decisions are made for him. He has zero input in decisions which directly and profoundly affect him.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...

Even by the scope of the test, it can easily be demonstrated that chimpanzees and other apes are legally incapable. If this case succeeds we will have handed the apes the fucking keys.

Must be frustrating...

[Empiric]

...having a metaphysics that is logically and ethically incoherent.

and I'll be right there with you as soon as

[Anonymous Coward]

you "pro-choice" folks start being honest about the word "contraception". Most "pro-life" people do not oppose the use of actual conception blocking devices BY CONCENTING ADULTS (we do not, however, like it when you go behind our backs and push the stuff on our kids). Non-Catholic "pro-life" people have no objection to the prevention of conception, they just object to murdering a human being, which is what you get after conception occurs.

Catholics have a whole other set of issues that most protestants do not, which cause them to object to things most protestants are fine with - and not being one I'll leave that to some Catholic poster to defend.

Pro-choicers far too often play the little game of claiming that even abortifacients are "contraception", which was how they stirred so much outrage over the "Hobby Lobby" court case; Hobby Lobby was willing to (and had a long history of) provide coverage for actual contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies, they just refused to cover abortion or abortifacients (drugs that chemically kill an unborn child).

Re:and I'll be right there with you as soon as

[RoccamOccam]

Too bad that you posted as AC. This post is the best one in the whole thread.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

by your way of thinking, if somebody objects to you killing your kid, then that somebody must pay to educate you not to have a kid, and help you buy supplies to help you practice making a kid without actually making one, and it you have a kid anyway then that person is evil if he does not support your kid. Right? hmmmmmmmm.

I love guns. You are obligated to pay for my gun safety course and an unlimited supply of blank ammo so I can practice shooting without hurting anybody. If I want more guns and ammo (with various safety features, of course) you need to buy thoose for me too (because I have a natural human RIGHT to have fun), and if I then manage to fire some live rounds and do some actual damage, it's your duty to pick-up the tab for all the damage I do too. You know something? I think I like this new entitlement mentality.... Turns out I also like to fly planes. You need to pay for my flight simulator, and a safe plane for me to fly without harming anybody. If I manage to fly a plane and harm people or property, the you agree to pickup the tab for that too, right? [end sarcasm]

You see, here in the REAL WORLD, my objection to you killing your own kid does not actually mean I am evil if I refuse to support your kid and instead expect you to do everything you can to provide for yourself and your kids before you demand a portion of my life (via a portion of the wages I get in exchange for bits of my life). When I see a person in genuine need who did nothing to put himself in that spot, I am perfectly willing to be charitable. but there is something very unjust about the irresponsible demanding the wages of the responsible as a "right". You people on the left have some very bizarre ideas.

You are highly confused

[Anonymous Coward]

"a fetus has NO RIGHTS. It isn't even a person in the legal sense. It is an "event". A transient condition on a woman. Legally it is in the same class as a cancer."

First, a fetus is just a Latin medical term people use to avoid saying "unborn child". Using the Latin word for "offspring" in a human female does NOT make the "offspring" any less human. By your warped reasoning, if we just label people "homosapiens" we can then wipe them out, because they are, after all, not "human beings", they are "homosapiens". This is typical leftist Orwellian change-reality-by-changing-the-words thinking.

Second, There is no way that you can say that an unborn human is an "event". There is an actual difference between a physical organism and a happening. The former actually exists in space and time, the latter is only experienced, remembered, documented, etc. Events may involve many physical objects but they are, themselves NOT physical objects. A bomb is a physical object; an explosion is not (though it obviously INVOLVES physical objects). The Fourth of July is NOT a physical object.

Third, a pregnancy is indeed a transient condition in a woman, but a pregnancy is not the same thing as a child. The pregnancy is the process by which the child is developed. The one-time transient process of shipbuilders in a shipyard building a ship is NOT interchangeable with the ship that they built.

Fourth, You are VERY wrong about the law. In most jurisdictions, you will be prosecuted and punished for a second murder if you murder a preganant woman and kill her unborn child in the process. There is no jurisdiction where wou will be prosecuted and jailed for murder for the act of removing a cancerous tumor. We have many laws on the books that apply to unborn persons (particularly in the medical context, where custody and medical billing, and health insurance, and medical practice laws apply). There is actually a large body of law that treats the unborn like it treats other humans (like humans on full life support) and the idea that the unborn child is simply a bit of unwanted, disposable tissue like a tumor is a very recent idea in US law (a convenient legal dodge of the post Roe-v-Wade era that has introduced a lot of hypocrisy into the US legal code). Doctors who perform surgery on unborn children while those children are still in their mothers' wombs CERTAINLY do not treat them as cancrous tumors, nor do the malpractice laws that are applied if they make an error...

Re:You are highly confused

[ihtoit]

piss off, if a fetus were a person with human rights then abortion would be murder hence illegal across all jurisdictions signatory to the UN Charter on Human Rights.

Re:You are highly confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you've just stated what the argument is. Seriously, did you not know that was what the argument was? The belief that abortion should be considered murder.

Re:You are highly confused

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a matter of definitions. We all agree that it becomes a human (in a way any random "clump of cells" does not), so playing with the fallacy of the beard based on appearance does little good. And it's dependent on others for quite some time after being born (when we *do* still consider it infanticide to kill it), so the fact is that positions on this aren't very logical at all.

But logic only works as long as emotion does not hold sway, and with responses like "piss off" I don't expect any logical thinking from you. Especially not as you seek to use an arbitrary legal definition to avoid actually thinking about the subject.

Re:You are highly confused

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

The belief that abortion should be considered murder is absolutely fucking retarded, though.

Re:You are highly confused

[ihtoit]

what the fuck are you drivelling on with beards? And FYI, arbitrary definitions is what the legal system fucking FUNCTIONS ON.

Re:You are highly confused

[Anonymous Coward]

That is exactly what people like the AC above are advocating, which is scary for anyone who enjoys body autonomy. In the interest of consistency, I would certainly be in favor of modifying existing laws to remove the notion that a fetus is a discrete being that can be murdered or injured independently of its host/mother/carrier/whatever. A compromise might be elevating the severity of a crime involving a fetus, similar to how hate-crime legislation is worded, or treating the fetus like a critical body part or highly-valued property for the purposes of prosecution, but that notion makes way too many people uncomfortable I'm sure.

Re:You are highly confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that is the exact argument that the pro-lifers are making, though--that it IS murder and should be illegal, as such.

Invertebrate rights now!

[Biff Stu]

Just say no to escargot!

Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[CountBrass]

Slashdot isn't an academic discussion board where precision is required.

Stop being such an obvious troll; or at least try to troll with finesse.

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.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not the person you are responding to but I'll chip in.

The idea that a corporate person should have freedom of speech is, I think, a problem. For example, it allows them to spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns. This is undemocratic. Corporations don't get to vote or stand for election, but are allowed to have huge influence over politics through money. Since they are not real people they often act without morals or any sense of human decency, and try to get politicians with a similar disposition elected and the law change to reflect their myopic obsession with profit above all else.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Karmashock]

Explain why a corporation should be forbidden from participating in a political cause but the World Wildlife Federation should be allowed to participate? What is the legal difference?

This gets back to basic freedom of association and freedom of speech. The corporation is made up of and represents people just like Save the Whales, Planned Parenthood, or the Teamsters.

If a corporation cannot speak politically then no association should be allowed to speak either. And that means the only people allowed to speak will be individuals. And since associations will be silenced, the only individuals that will be heard will be elites. Billionaires and movie stars.

You can't just cut the corps out and arbitrarily leave the other associations with access without some sort of reason. Simply saying "these groups agree with me and this other group doesn't" just means you're silencing your opposition.

Think about it.

This attack on the corps has been a rather tired argument thrown around for years. It isn't especially interesting is it?

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[jimbolauski]

The idea that a corporate person should have freedom of speech is, I think, a problem. For example, it allows them to spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns. This is undemocratic. Corporations don't get to vote or stand for election, but are allowed to have huge influence over politics through money. Since they are not real people they often act without morals or any sense of human decency, and try to get politicians with a similar disposition elected and the law change to reflect their myopic obsession with profit above all else.

The problem with this is that when you boil it down a corporation is just a group of people. That group of people pools their money together and buys adds or donates to politicians in ways that benefit the goals of their group. The rights of a person do not decrease when they are in a group. I would much rather corrupt politicians get removed from office then start limiting speech.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[tehcyder]

The idea that a corporate person should have freedom of speech is, I think, a problem. For example, it allows them to spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns. This is undemocratic. Corporations don't get to vote or stand for election, but are allowed to have huge influence over politics through money. Since they are not real people they often act without morals or any sense of human decency, and try to get politicians with a similar disposition elected and the law change to reflect their myopic obsession with profit above all else.

That's nothing to do with them being legal persons or not.

I think you must have some romantic libertarian idea that the world should be composed of individual entrepreneurs in a free market.

If you abandoned the legal concept of a limited liability corporation, rich people would just arrange their businesses as partnerships, joint trading companies, informal cartels or some other artificial construction. As soon as a business grows past the size that one person can control, you have de facto corporations anyway.

Short of the government making it illegal to act in business as other than a sole trader, I don't see what you could do about it.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Talderas]

Whenever a law would restrict a fundamental right of the individual, such as the freedom of speech, the state must provide compelling reason to violate right and pass the strict scrutiny test. Unders strict scrutiny the law or policy is presumed unconstitutional and the burden of proof lies on the state to show that the policy is necessary in order to achieve a state interest. If proved necessary it must demonstrate that the policy is narrow in scope and not overly broad so as to ensure minimal impact against the right.

What a lot of people, yourself include, misunderstand about Citizens United is that it was never about granting "personhood" to corporations. The ruling only showed that being a member of a group was not sufficient grounds to deny an individual their rights. It's been nearly two centuries since Dartmouth College v. Woodward in which SCOTUS first affirmed that being a member of a group was insufficient grounds to deny an individual his rights. Citizens United was a ruling that simply states that all corporations should be treated equally without exemptions. Corporations are mostly thought of as organizations like Exxon or Goldman Sachs when the reality is that it also includes organizations like CBS, NBC, the Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood.

The outcome we currently have is pretty much the only outcome which doesn't greatly violate the 1st Amendment by violating freedom of speech, press, or association, violating the 4th's protection against unreasonable searches, or violating the 14th's equal protection clause. The only ways around this is to reverse the decision on Buckley v. Valeo (1976) divorcing speech from money or introduce a constitutional amendment that explicitly grants Congress the right to regulate campaign contributions.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[XxtraLarGe]

The idea that a corporate person should have freedom of speech is, I think, a problem. For example, it allows them to spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns. This is undemocratic. Corporations don't get to vote or stand for election, but are allowed to have huge influence over politics through money. Since they are not real people they often act without morals or any sense of human decency, and try to get politicians with a similar disposition elected and the law change to reflect their myopic obsession with profit above all else.

Same thing for Unions.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Sigmon]

Amen and Amen! I think these (potentially) well-meaning people that want to ban corporations from participating in any kind of political process don't really think their idea though all the way. They THINK they are promoting free-speech... but, in fact, they would simply silence somebody (or a group of people) with whom they disagree. The true test of whether or not one truly adheres to the concept of 'free speech' is his or her reaction when somebody expresses an idea or promotes something with which one disagrees.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[AmiMoJo]

I really don't see how limiting what corporations can do would limit the rights of individuals. An individual who works for a corporation could say what they like and spend as much of their own money as they like when not acting in an official capacity.

It's like discrimination laws. As an individual you can have nothing to do with gay people, refuse to even talk to them. As a business and a member of staff you must serve them and not discriminate. I really don't see any problem with that, because businesses are a special case and not people.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did he ever say that there would be an exception for associations?

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I continually see people bring up unions in response to someone saying corporate spending should be limited. I don't think I've ever seen someone actually advocate for an exemption for unions from the limitations. So are you saying that you agree with his statement and just want to be clear that unions are included or was it just a partisan "if they go after something I like, I'll target something I think they like"?

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Talderas]

Corporations have had the same rights as people. It was started in 1819 in Dartmouth College v. Woodward where corporations were held to have the same rights as people for making and enforcing contracts. In 1968 the NAACP v. Button declared that the NAACP's 1st Amendment rights were protected under the 14th's equal proection clause. The 1978 case First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti said the the speech did not lose protection because its source was a corporation that could prove an effect on its business (previously a corporation was only afford speech that impacted its business). They did rule that political spending by a corporation was not permitted in 1990 and 2003 but those rulings were essentially overruled with Citizen's United because permitting press corporations while denying other corporations free speech was violating the 14th as established by earlier cases. You also can't limit it to for profit corporations since PACS would still exist and are protected from it by the non-profit news organizations.

In 1876 the court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that political spending and political speech are interrelated. Money = speech. So you can't restrict the former without restricting the latter and thus running into a free speech issue. As we know from NAACP v. Button, corporation free speech rights can't be restricted.

Thus the only logical conclusion of our laws and decisions is that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on political speech and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. If you want to change it you need to go back and get some of the key decisions overturned. May I suggest Buckley v. Valeo as a starting point?

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[XxtraLarGe]

I continually see people bring up unions in response to someone saying corporate spending should be limited. I don't think I've ever seen someone actually advocate for an exemption for unions from the limitations. So are you saying that you agree with his statement and just want to be clear that unions are included or was it just a partisan "if they go after something I like, I'll target something I think they like"?

No. Just look at this page. Every restriction or permission for corporations is the same as unions. The difference being, unions can take money from their members to spend on campaign issues that their members may not necessarily support.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Karmashock]

I have to assume he would exclude associations because the notion that he would forbid all associations of people from having such influence is as absurd as it is politically impossible.

The problem with this corporate personhood whine is that it is ultimately nothing more then a talking point fed to impressionable children that don't understand the issues.

They don't know that the corps are basically just associations of people. That the distinction between for profit and not for profit is one very easily twisted. And that really the only way to stop corps from influencing politics is to forbid all associations. Which means the world wildlife foundation etc would not be allowed to petition the government. Sound like that is going to work? Obviously not.

And even if you were crazy enough to try and it somehow made it through congress... all you would have done is given total power to elite individuals because the most powerful people in the country would then be billionaires, movie stars, and other people that are individually able to influence.

In effect, banning corporations would make the resulting political environment less democratic. And why furthermore should a corp not be allowed to petition? They pay taxes. They follow the same laws. The laws effect them. Why shouldn't they be allowed to say "hey that law is bullshit." Just like any other group?

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, it allows them to spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns. This is undemocratic.

Allowing corporations to spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns is in part a consequence of allowing corporations to become overly large. Ethics based policies that limited the size that any business could achieve (in terms of number of employees) would be a great help here.

A 10k or 20k limit would probably be reasonable - this would keep businesses around the size of a medium sized town. No business should be able to buy or merge with a competitor.

Some work on contract law would be required to support this, since otherwise organizations would try to do an end run around the rules through abuse of contract law.

We might apply these ethics based size limits to any organization with salaried employees, not just businesses.

Another reason corporations can accumulate vast amounts of money derives from problems with the tax laws. Current laws allow corporations to play all kinds of games with their income, allowing through tax evasions the accumulation of large monetary surpluses that can be used to buy politicians and lawyers. This can be dealt with by appropriate modifications of tax laws.

An additional consequence of corporations being overly large is that the executives become completely out of touch with the stockholders and employees. This means that the corporation does not necessarily act in the interests of its members. As a result, the claim (often used to justify corporate personhood) that the organization is merely a way for its individual members to express their right to freedom of speech is false. Limiting the size of corporations would help here as well.

Yet another aspect of the problem is the ethics issue that inherently flows from allowing anonymous donations to political entities. With modern computer technology, there is no reason why every donation made to any political entity shouldn't be public and traceable to a living human being acting on their own behalf.

Any money received by politicians or political parties that fails this test must be donated to some charity outside any jurisdiction in which the entity operates.

Combined with a right to ethical government, where even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided if possible, we would then be able to treat any policy or law that can reasonably be supposed to result from corporate or other donations as invalid and illegal.

Re:Stop trolling and learn to use Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever a law would restrict a fundamental right of the individual, such as the freedom of speech, the state must provide compelling reason to violate right and pass the strict scrutiny test. Unders strict scrutiny the law or policy is presumed unconstitutional and the burden of proof lies on the state to show that the policy is necessary in order to achieve a state interest. If proved necessary it must demonstrate that the policy is narrow in scope and not overly broad so as to ensure minimal impact against the right.

Nice propaganda. These statements are part of the typical rhetoric used by the US legal profession to try to conceal all the problems in the legal system.
There are four problems with this position that the US legal profession generally fails to acknowledge:
1. Nothing in the Constitution or Bill of Rights says anything to this effect.
2. As written, this would allow the government to violate rights "retained by the people" under the 9th Amendment - a contradiction (it is always unethical practice of law for legal professionals to write or use laws or precedents that create contradictions in the legal system). Rights retained by the people, by definition, can not be taken away by ANY entity of government. The claim that there is a necessity to achieve a state interest is thus irrelevant in such cases.
3. Natural language is ambiguous. Terms such as "overly broad", "narrow in scope", "minimal impact" and so forth can mean just about anything.
4. There are all kinds of laws passed that fail to meet this test. For example, consider the dual 9th Amendment rights to ethical government and ethical practice of law, where even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided if there is any alternative. We have large numbers of local and state governments issuing traffic tickets and keeping the money in their budget. This is a prima facie case of unethical government (and unethical practice of law, on the part of the judges and prosecutors that are involved).

What this isn't about...

[jandersen]

A brief scan through the comments on slashdot so far comes up the usual, lame list of "reasons why this is just so stupid, like".

So, this is not about whether chimpanzees should get the vote.
It isn't about whether they should be considered human.
It isn't about whether they should be allowed/forced to take part in human society on an equal footing.

What it is about, is how we treat the animals in our care; part of that has to touch on whether animals have anything like personality: do they 'feel' rather than simply 'react'? Do they have wishes, intentions, thoughts, or are they simply 'flesh machines'? As our insight grows, it becomes harder and harder to deny that many, if not most, animals are like ourselves in that respect; what separates us is a matter of degrees rather than something fundamental: humans are more intelligent etc, but there is no reason to think we have a 'soul' which other animals don't have.

The other part of the problem is to decide what we ourselves are, or want to be. When we don't want to torture prisoners, when we don't just get out the popcorn and watch the Ebola epidemic etc, it is because we as a society have the choice to care about others. It wasn't always so, and not everybody agrees. But we have chosen to be the kind of people who care and therefore we find it hard to deliberately cause suffering.

Whether legislation is the right way, I don't know; in my experience people often resent rules and laws that are imposed on them, even if they agree on the sentiment behind them. Basically, it is about respect; we should certainly respect other animals on their terms, but having rules imposed on you doesn't feel very respectful.

Re:What this isn't about...

[soccerisgod]

Whether legislation is the right way, I don't know; in my experience people often resent rules and laws that are imposed on them, even if they agree on the sentiment behind them. Basically, it is about respect; we should certainly respect other animals on their terms, but having rules imposed on you doesn't feel very respectful.

You mean rules like "Don't murder little Timmy"?

If you accept that some animals are much closer to us than to other kinds of animals, that they have personality, feelings, emotions, intelligence and all, then rules for dealing with them are no longer optional, they're mandatory. Just as some rules are mandatory between humans. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant.

Re:What this isn't about...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we could treat ourselves with such consideration. Godwin in 3... 2... 1...

Look at how the Germans treated some people. Stalin. Pol Pot. Oklahoma execution chambers.

Not the slightest bit of concern is given to the human in those instances. It is just, "Die. Faster, slower? Who cares. Just die. If our own incompetence causes suffering, then all the better."

Do not get me wrong, I do not support torturing other animals. I am just saying that if we can not even treat ourselves with a bit of respect, other animals are going to fare worse.

An issue for congress?

[Jorgensen]

I'd be surprised if this can be decided at the New York State court level.... Surely this is an issue for congress? (yeah - pun uttterly intended. Thanks. I'll be here all week)

How about an unborn fetus?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Chimps have rights maybe we can extend this to an unborn (human) child? At least for the right to live... nah, what am I thinking. Chimp fetuses will probably get more protections than human fetuses. It's all a matter of convenience in today's self-absorbed age!

Obligatory

[nospam007]

Ooooook!

Does that mean they'll get to vote?

[Kvasio]

Chimps and baboons have passive voting rights already. Remember GWB?

And why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

We grant "person-hood" to politicians; they certainly are a lower life form.

Personhood for an AI ?

[TerryC101]

At some point this will play out in the courts when an AI start to approach human levels of intelligence. Will we use the chimpanzee case as a precedent?

Burger Flipping

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap, soon there will be a lack of burger flipping positions at the job markets as chimpanzees and dolphins get the right to flip burgers with theirs pawns and, wait for it, flippers! The state might as well release all humans to the streets who have a restricted legal capacity. Being under care of others and being a "person" are separate issues.

Rights for some, not for others?

[Anonymous Coward]

i find it ironic that NY would be the host of a lawsuit attempting to gain Rights for non-human species, when they have been forefront in the removal of Rights for humans!

Thanks to Cuomo and the NY Legislature I have stopped being idealistic and am now taking a more pragmatic view.
They are currently infringing on my Second Amendment Right, and have demonstrated a desire to violate the 1st and 4th Amendments. Until Rights are restored for human citizens of the United States living in NY, how can they argue for non-humans to have Rights?

Just what we need.

[Anonymous Coward]

More republican voters...

Legal rights for animals are enivitable and welcom

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a logical and welcome outcome to the racism reversion we have gone through in Western society.

Racism, Sexism and Speciesism.

In the old days people were stripped of rights because of race or gender. We afford more rights to people with intellectual disabilities - raw intelligence below that of the chimp or dolphin. We don't in modern times "dehumanise" these people and use them for horrifying tests under the proviso of "if we don't test on the tards how to explain to real people when their child dies of X".

The logical outcome is to bring protection and respect to other species - chimps, dolphins and even lab rats.

People will always bang on about the 'need' to brutalise these animals in the name of science but, necessity is the mother of invention. We need to legally protect these animals give them rights that are essential because it's the moral thing to do - even if those animals don't have the capacity to parse that moral thought.

It's not what separates us from the animals - it's what separates us from barbarity, irrationality, subjective rights and the arbitrary disenfranchisement of the powerless - in this case the subjects of animal experimentation.

I genuinely wish I could find a more ethical means of obtaining meat - genetically engineered 'brainless' entities - or some other means of production of meat - that didn't involve ending the life of an animal is highly preferable....

Humanzee

[wisnoskij]

I always wondered. These wackjobs or obviously crazy enough and these legal routes are obviously never going to get them anywhere, even they must know that.

Why not just reopen some of the long abandoned Human/Ape interbreeding studies? All it would probably take in one open minded woman and a little access to a Ape. And even if worst came to worst, and we were not that compatible, all they would need is one fertility specialist and access to some fertility equipment. It would not cost that much, even if they could not find a volunteer to do it for free.

Re:Humanzee

[LWATCDR]

ummm...
Humans an apes do not have the same number of chromosomes. They can not breed. To make a combination of human and great ape you would need to do a lot of genetic engineering.
It would take a lot more than a fertility specialist to pull that off.

Re:Humanzee

[wisnoskij]

Humans do not have the same number of chromosomes as other humans, and can still breed fine with them.

Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they also have duties and responsibilities, or only rights?

Hell no

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous. Throw it out of court.

Circular reasoning

[hey!]

Well, dismissing the suit because iof this kind of technicality is certainly feasible, but the reasoning behind it is circular.

If someone's legal status of "person" isn't recognized by the courts, then it is likely NOBODY can have the standing to bring suit on their behalf. There is, in a purely technical sense, there is nobody TO bring a suit on behalf of.

It turns out there are *other* grounds for establishing standing. It's not necessary to show that you are directly affected by some action to bring a First Amendment suit against a government entity for example. Such a suit brought on 14th Amendment "due process" grounds would put the court in a bind: it could not dismiss the suit because of standing without, in effect, making a ruling, or at least a determination.

We may well be forced to clarify the basis of indvidual "personhood" in the law by advancing technology; possibly AI, possibly even biotechnology. What if research into intelligence enhancement produced a chimp that could score above 100 on an IQ test that had been devised to handle humans with speech loss? Would it be reasonable to deny that chimp legal personhood while allowing someone who'd had a stroke to retain his? Why?

Re:Circular reasoning

[mjm1231]

You are completely right that this is a complex issue with more questions than answers, but making IQ the qualifier for which organisms (and just to add to the complexity, collection of organisms would be more accurate) are "persons" would remove that designation from a large number who currently hold it.

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Well on the plus side, if chimps become people then we can make our soylent green out of chimps!

Primate research will be moved offshore

[Anonymous Coward]

If these lawsuits succeed, primate research will not stop. Instead, it will be moved offshore. To other countries that might have fewer animal protections than the United States.

Just like if we stop drilling for oil on our soil, drilling will be moved to some other country. Where environmental protections might be laxer than here.

Primate research, petroleum exploration and drilling, manufacturing...we can do these things here, in the United States, where we have laws that offer reasonable protection against environmental damage and exploitation. Or, we can make them so onerous to do here, that we push them offshore to jurisdictions that offer fewer protections than we do. But stopping them altogether isn't going to happen for the foreseeable future.

This is why courts are so slow

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you can't argue about a bully cop in front of a judge and have to wait 6 to 18 months for your trial about fraud you are innocent of. Because so many of the court rooms and judges after years of training and law practice are tied up with this stuff. DA's, balliffs, court reporters, etc. Meanwhile all the common law stuff for the people judges are waitlisted.

Rights vs. Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we skip the 'rights' BS and just go with what is 'right'?

By this, I means the basic morality that everyone sort of starts out with, then we lose sight in the semantics.

Should a chimp have the right to not be abused? Beats me. Is it not right to abuse a chimp? Yes.

Standards of decency used to allow for this, but, now, we've redefined that by some religious imperative, so now we've got people that want to give things 'rights' since that's how we define it.

Breath is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's really fucked up when it's wrong to kill a remorseless murderer or imprison a chimp, but a baby can be coldly killed because they haven't taken a breath.

Fortunately, such a fucked up situation isn't likely to ever happen. I doubt anyone is ever going to care about exactly how babies get their oxygen. Mundane chemical mechanics aren't really what anyone is talking about in this context. In fact, looking past these mundane things, and instead, concentrating on what's really important to us, is how these chimps might end up getting treated differently than before.

What's going on is that people can observe grown murderers, grown chimps (or hypothetically: long-running AIs or aliens), and notice that they behave more person-like than a very young (perhaps even unborn) human. And since some people (no, certainly not everyone) use observation (instead of fully trusting their imaginations) to infer things about reality, they'll hold these other entities to be more person-like than unborn humans.

That's the big question: do we want to learn from what we see, and adapt our ideas to it? Or do we want to adapt what we see, to fit the ideas that we have already decided are true? Which is more important: the world imagined, or the world seen? Which is more real? Mystics have their answer: the mind's eye is the only true eye. But as more people turn away from paranormal beliefs (because they're so unsatisfying and just lead to constant dischord between their beliefs and their experiences), more people will start to assign weight to their optical eyes and other senses.

Assault

[adiposity]

Are we going to put them in prison when they assault someone?

Re:Assault

[nbritton]

Are we going to put them in prison when they assault someone?

No because they would be judged mentally incompetent to stand trial. You would commit them if they were a danger to others.

Affirmative Action

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean we have to hire a certain number of chimps? There are some good openings in sales...

Bozo for president

[Anonymous Coward]

He could hardly do worse than his standin Ronnie Raygun.

Competence

[nbritton]

I feel they should be given the same rights as mentally incompetent persons. In particular, they should be given the right to have a conservator appointed; this would benefit them because it is usually crime for a conservator to take advantage of a conservatee. If they are granted personhood status, I would anticipate they would be entitled to SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps. They should also be entitled to make, at least, minimum wage for any work they perform.

After seeing you run like a whipped dog

[Anonymous Coward]

With his tail between his legs here where apk challenged you fairly http://ask.slashdot.org/commen... ? You don't deserve to be treated as good as your namesake, pussy.

Cue Picard...

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! Not THIS shit again!

Re:Cue Picard...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, calling an ape a monkey is like calling a canine a feline or an equine a bovine. It's silly to confuse two primates, carnivores, ungulates, etc.

Mod this douchetard DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck is modding this asshole's posts up? He's been spewing bullshit and intentionally being an ass all fucking week. I'm tired of hearing him speak. STOP MODDING THIS FUCKER UP!

Re:Mod this douchetard DOWN

[Karmashock]

Which you say while remaining an anonymous coward.

Too much of a coward to even use a fake name on the internet and you want to know who is modding me up or down?

Dude... get over yourself. If you have a problem with me, explain why. If all you've got is "SILENCE THE INFIDEL" then get bent.

Re: here's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a joke: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

The framework for the anti-personhood idea is that corporations obtain the benefits of being legal persons, but not the costs and risks. If a corporation commits theft or manslaughter, it pays a fine. A real person goes to jail. If a corporation engages in bribery masquerading as civic engagement, they have vastly more legal power than most individuals AND most governments, and can weasel out of trouble in most cases.

A corporation does not eat, sleep, or experience emotion. It has no wants or needs, just fiduciary interests. To call a corporation a legal person does not make it equal to other persons, but makes it superior due to its lack of human weakness. The power disparity is enormous.

Corporations should be given those person-like rights which are minimally required to carry out business, but should have absolutely no right, as a distinct entity, to engage in the political process. This would preclude lobbying or otherwise influencing their own employees.

Non-profit entities which are focused on issues (e.g. humanitarian, environmental, generically pro-business) should have the right to communicate with Congress and the President, but no right to make campaign contributions or otherwise work closely on behalf of any candidate.

Re: here's a start

[Karmashock]

As to executing corporations, you could say the same thing for any association. Non-profits and unions aren't executed either.

As to corps committing felonies and simply paying fines for it, can you please give a specific example so we can examine it please? In most cases, my understanding is that it is a civil matter which is often handled with a fine indifferent to did it.
As to having more resources to avoid legal problems, you can say that about rich people, government agencies, or really anyone powerful. That isn't specific to corporations.

As to corporations not eating, they absolutely do eat. Every employee must be paid. Shareholders must be rewarded. Taxes must be paid. Etc... all of that goes to your overhead or burn rate or bottom line. You feed/pay that or starve/die.

As to not sleeping, they have business hours and non-business hours in most cases. At least for many sorts of decisions and operations. Corporations have preferred hours of operation which is largely dictated by when certain employees are at work.

As to not experiencing emotion, they are a group entity so it is hard to say what emotions are being felt on average from one moment to the next. However, the individuals at the companies obviously do have emotions and certain members are in over all executive control of the company. What is more, if you've ever listened to a management discussion at a company, you know there are emotions.

Steven Jobs was famous for going off into rages at people. Rage is an emotion. And Apple has shown itself from time to time to be a very angry company especially in regards to Android and Google. Apple's behavior often doesn't make good business sense. A lot of it is down to the feelings and values of the senior management.

Apple recently told shareholders that if they don't want to support renewable energy then they shouldn't invest in Apple. Think about that.

So companies do have emotions and values because they are made up of people that likewise have emotions and values.

As to companies not having human weaknesses... you must be kidding. How many dumb things have you seen companies do over the years and you're going to tell me they don't have human weaknesses? This whole paragraph from you was ill considered and really did nothing more then show both your ignorance of corporate governance and your prejudice towards something which you honestly do not understand.

I don't say that to be offensive. But you're saying things that are simply wrong.

As to corporations not being permitted to engage in the political process, why should they be forbidden and other associations permitted to do so? What basis rooted in the US constitution are you using to make that argument? Because your idea would have to pass the Supreme Court. I'm pretty sure it would fail if this is all you've got.

As to having a right to communicate with congress, what about releasing criticism of politicians during election cycles? That is, do these organizations have a right to talk to the public and try to influence their voting patterns? Say things like "we at the anti whatever group would like you to know that politician X won't sign our anti whatever bill. Do not vote for politician X. Instead vote for politician Y who has said publicly to be in favor of anti whatever legislation."

If you say that is not okay you're going to run into major freedom of speech/freedom of association issues.

I really don't think you can get this sort of thing passed. I think you're vastly underestimating the complexity of the issue.

Lawyers

[AndyCanfield]

I'll believe it the day that the chimpanzees show up in court and their lawyers are chimpanzees also. The practical definition of "human" is "anyone who can sue you."

thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an account and sometimes post using it, but I usually just post AC because its easier and quicker (well, also because I am a generally private person who runs w/o cookies and such) and I've never really seen a benefit from posting from my account. Generally, my AC posts are more "convience" than "coward" (as this one and the cone you commented on are). More recently, I have been re-thinking this and have started to think that cultural trends might be making it wise to post anon when criticizing the policies advocated by people on the left; there seems to be a rising tide of "tolerant" and "peace-loving" "open minded" left-leaners who hurl death threats at people who oppose their political positions. This stuff is getting really quite unsettling, and it is simply NOT the way things used to be in the US; the rise of secularism and the belief that we are all just animals seems to inevitably bring a rise in open hostility and animal behavior. Very sad.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

- John Adams

When the people cease to control themselves, a police state will be needed to control them.

When will we be able to vote for chimps?

[Cro Magnon]

Because, frankly, I'd rather have a chimp in the White House than most of the humans we've had.

Re: here's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if you're intellectually lazy or trolling. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former. It's not my job to mitigate your laziness. Just do a quick Google search for "corporate crimes." Some of what you find will be general whining against corporations, but in the first page or two you'll find solid journalism documenting corporate actions that, had they been committed by individuals, would have been punishable by jail time. Common among these are fraud and gross safety and environmental violations.

If you're trolling you'll reply that these were the result of individual actors, not the corporation as a whole. The simple refutation of that nonsense goes like this: if you follow this line of idiocy you reach the result that corporations are incapable of crimes because all acts are committed by individuals. The problem with that crap is that it ignores the governance structure of the corporation, where multiple individuals are collaborating to make decisions based on written and unwritten codes of action within the company. If an individual makes the decision in isolation then it's an individual crime. If the decision is made through a corporate process within a corporate structure then it's a corporate crime.

Please stop being lazy.

Re: here's a start

[Karmashock]

Failing to give specific examples makes it impossible for you to back up your point. Sadly this means the discussion ends with you failing to clarify your point.

Next time you want to discuss something like this with another person that might have ANY idea different from your own... you might consider that being clear is an important part of communication.

As to laziness. It isn't my responsibility to make YOUR argument for you. I run the risk of straw-manning you by accident if I try to do that. So I ask you to define your own argument. This not only gives you control over your own argument it also reduces the likelihood that I'll misunderstand or misrepresent your position.

Anyway... since I doubt you're going to reverse course and give specific examples... I guess we're done.

Cya.

Re: here's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you're both lazy AND a troll. Eventually you may look back on this and regret having been such, but probably not.

Other people are not your servants.

Why is it someone else's job to do very basic research for you?

Why is it someone else's job to pry open your absurdly closed mind?

If you continue to go through life with your hands covering your eyes you will continue to smugly assert that no evidence has been shown to you, yet will fail to see what's right in front of you.

When you graduate High School and go to University you may find your professors are not so forgiving.

Re: here's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
http://www.justice.gov/crimina...

It took about 2 minutes of Google to find this.

The null hypothesis is now "corporations have committed crimes for which an individual would face prison time."

If you disagree, the burden is fully on you to justify that.

Re: here's a start

[Karmashock]

Your argument is still forfeit. You know those citations are laughable in this context.

I asked for a specific example and you cited a paper and some 20 page memorandium.

From this I cannot get your point. I cannot understand what your argument is... you have no specific example.

It would be like if I responded to your point by dropping an encyclopedia in front of you and then saying my argument was in there somewhere.

Get real.

Either have the courage to make your argument without evasion or concede.

I'm almost certain this is a sad rhetorical technique. You know your argument is weak and you know that if examined you might not be able to carry the argument. So rather then engage and let the chips fall where they may... you are determined to keep the matter so vague that I can't nail you down.

Fine... you fail to make a clear argument then. And citing these two links doesn't make your argument clearer. I don't even need links from you. I want you to explain what you mean specifically with specific examples. I am very happy to look it up on google or whatever myself after you have done that. But you must be clear or I have no confidence that you even have a point.

Hands are tied here unless you are going to make a clear argument.

Chimps and Animal Rights and Colorado

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Chimps want human rights, just go to Colorado, where they already have equal rights with humans. The Colorado legislature has passed more animal rights laws than any state in the U.S.

This is the state, where the man in in prison, for not seeking medical care for his dog. The animal rights lawyer, wanted justice for the dog.

Re: here's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew you were a troll, now you've revealed the kind of troll you are. You are a "god of the gaps" troll. Look it up if you're not too lazy...of course you are.

Every time you look in the mirror you should remember that you have absolutely no human integrity -- that you like to declare false victories through misdirection. Disingenuous, self-serving vermin like you are what makes the future of the human race bleak. I bet if you had lived in communist East Germany you would have joyfully collaborated with the stazi just for the empty and pathetic feeling of power it gave you.

Grow up little boy, there's a great big world out there waiting to teach you.

Why do chimps matter less than equally dumb humans

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of posts are really going out of their way to ignore what's at stake here. The reason for the personhood argument is to determine whether or not we can continue holding chimps in captivity and forcing them to undergo experiments, perform in show business, etc.

Chimps are very similar to humans, there is plenty of reason to assume they have the same basic subjective experiences that we do. The idea that our basic interests deserve moral consideration while theirs do not is arbitrary. There is nothing morally significant about species, it is the interests of the individual being that matter. If we want to continue using chimps in our experiments and demonstrate that it's morally acceptable to do so, then we must demonstrate that they are psychologically so different from human beings that they don't have any of the same needs to be free and social that humans do.

Re: here's a start

[Karmashock]

I'm not a troll. I made a comment on the issue in good faith and you said you disagreed but refused to say why specifically.

I asked for evidence and you said I should use google when all I wanted you to do was to clearly explain your position.

Eventually, you posted some totally useless links to very long winded sources and provided no pointers as to what you wanted me to look at within them. I woudl have been very happy to read PORTIONS of those sources if you cited them. But you seem to be saying that if I dont' read your sources in their entirity that I am unworthy of intellectual regard.

You sir are in fact the troll. As much is obvious to anyone with a clue. As to our relative value as human beings, it would be very sad indeed if our moment of judgement as people were determined entirely by a stupid thread on slashdot. That you think that is a valid judgment of a person's whole life really just goes to the core of your own moral shallowness.

Calm down, little man. Your petty opinions on this board are as nothing to the rest of your life. I hope that outside of this you're a better person and I wish that hopefully better person a good life. As to the troll that you have animated this board... this persona you're displaying here... Lets hope that gets retired. It is without utility.

RePETA after me

[Anonymous Coward]

RePETA after MIA....

Animals

[Sciath]

We already have chimps (and other animals) running the country that have the right to vote. I might even suggest that chimpanzees (or dolphins) are more human (in thought or behavior) than many of our so-called powerful and wealthy. Because humans that are wealthy and/or powerful can be more inhumane than chimps or dolphins.