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New Effort To Grant Legal Rights To Chimpanzees Fails

sciencehabit writes Advocates of "legal personhood" for chimpanzees have lost another battle. This morning, a New York appellate court rejected a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a chimp named Tommy from captivity. The group had argued that the chimpanzee deserved the human right of bodily liberty. Despite the loss, the NhRP is pursuing more cases in the hopes of conferring legal rights to a variety of animals, from elephants to dolphins.

4 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Human Rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if they're also in favor of granting those same human rights to actual unborn humans.

  2. Simple USA fix by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just declare chimps as corporations, THEN they'll have rights.

  3. Re:good by iggymanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Chimps aren't people. The laws for humans don't apply. Chimps are not held responsible for their behavior under the law, can't understand contracts or laws or rights of humans. If laws for treating specific species of non-humans in a kind way are wanted, they can be made (some exist already such as anti-cruelty laws)

  4. Re:good by shaitand · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Human Life > Animal Life

    The only basis needed is self interest. We are in fact humans, being fair to non-humans waits in line after being fair to humans.

    The interesting thing is that the MOST justifiable things human with animals are things that animal rights activists have success fighting. Such as experimentation for science and medicine. These things are temporary efforts that produce results that benefits animals and humans alike forever after.

    The abuses that they don't generally fight at all or even advocate (such as the keeping of pets, aka captivity) and especially spaying and neutering are the things we could end with little or no negative impact on the interests of our own species.