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Update: No Personhood for Chimps Yet
sciencehabit writes: In a decision that effectively recognizes chimpanzees as legal persons for the first time, a New York judge [Monday] granted a pair of Stony Brook University lab animals the right to have their day in court. The ruling marks the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeus corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention. The judicial action could force the university, which is believed to be holding the chimps, to release the primates, and could sway additional judges to do the same with other research animals.
Update: 04/21 21:39 GMT by S : Science has updated their article with news that the court has released an amended order (PDF) with the words "writ of habeas corpus" removed, no longer implying that chimps have legal personhood. The order still allows the litigation to go forward, but we'll have to wait for resolution.
"The ruling marks the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeus corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention." While I question some of the treatment of research animals, what exactly did the chimps ask of the court?
What's next? A judgement against the internet on behalf of cats everywhere?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In other news, medical research slowly comes to a crashing halt in test phases. Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations. Environmental moonbats everywhere cheer.
Om, nomnomnom...
...the right to vote and carry arms. I, for one, welcome our new Planet-of-the-Apes overlords.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Comparatively, chimps are fairly intelligent animals. Of course, compared to worms, chickens are fairly intelligent animals, and chickens are incredibly dumb.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
At the time of publishing, the chimps were unavailable for comment, though they could be observed engaging in their habitual poo-flinging and screeching.
The judge has indicated that if the chimps cannot conduct themselves with decorum in the court he will summarily find against them.
Rights campaigners have suggested the lawyers representing the chimps could be used in place of the chimps, thought there was some debate as to if the lawyers were themselves considered legal persons, instead of merely being slime bags.
I'm sorry, but while I do acknowledge that primates aren't simply dumb animals, do in fact have feelings and experience pain ... I'm still having a hard time understanding how they can be "legal persons" in anything but a highly contrived scenario of faulty logic which only PETA would believe.
Can they vote? Enter into contracts? Do they require legal guardians?
This seems like it will start to get into a slippery slope where there isn't so much a legal definition of "legal person", as some hand-wavy definition which will make the crunchy granola animal rights people happy, but which otherwise will be almost useless in law.
What next? Dogs? Cats? Gerbils? Rats? Crows?
WTF is the definition of legal person at this point?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm not sure how one monkey eating another might be affected by a ruling about chimps. It does beg the question about one chimp eating another though!
Have we solved all human rights issues so we now moved on to grant animals personhood?
When it is possible to sit down with your lab "animal" and have a conversation in sign language...
Maybe they shouldn't be a lab animal.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
We don't even have this right for humans (sitting in Gitmo ) in this country, but they considering to grant monkeys this right? Unbelievable.
... before someone tries to marry a chimp?
Why stop at granting them "personhood". Let's give them right to vote as well. While we're at it, how about let them run for political office and appoint them as judges. They can't do any worse that what we have today
The summary is wrong or at the very least highly misleading. What the judge did was allow the argument for chimp personhood to go forward. In other words the court did not find that chimps were unquestionably merely property. That's much weaker than deciding they are actual persons or legal persons. So yes there was a step forward for Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) but nowhere near as big a step as the summary implies.
give them voting rights too. Ask them to pay taxes as well. Especially social security. Well make sure they are not suppose to use brains like humans and submit to their corporate over lords.
The IRS will now show up and demand that they file their taxes.
The judicial action could force the university, which is believed to be holding the chimps, to release the primates
Release... Great idea - just tell me: how? Where?
Usually these animals are born in the lab and live in the lab until they die, or until they go to some kind of sanctuary or zoo. For obvious reasons they can't be released anywhere in the US - it's not where chimps naturally live. Even if released in natural chimp habitats, they'd die because they can't take care of themselves, or they may even get killed by the native chimps that don't like the intruders. They are simply fully dependent on their human caretakers, and need, even deserve, proper care to live out their lives peacefully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
This is nothing more than a jobs program for lawyers. They get to make millions suing various pharmaceutical companies for years. In return, your drugs cost more, and are more likely to have unknown side-effects.
This just opened up a whole new can of worms . . . and set them free from their unconstitutional detention, apparently.
www.wavefront-av.com
Precisely why are we stopping at recognizing chimps as people, except some sort of gross, obvious anthropocentrism?
Let's point out that there is an entire class of life forms on this planet that have ALSO gone through millions of years of evolution to reach where they are, and yet they are continually exploited, manipulated, and murdered on behalf of humans whims: that's right, I'm talking about plants.
There is no question that they live, breed, and grow. There is ample evidence that they feel pain, and even communicate with each other in ways that we barely understand. In many ways, they are far more in touch with their environment than we are, yet we chop vegetables up for food, we decapitate grass by the billions every week because they had the audacity to try to flourish, heck, we RIP THEM UP BY THEIR ROOTS and chemically sterilize them simply for living in the wrong place, dismissing it by calling them "weeds". We annihilate them, and even have the gall to use their corpses for DECORATION.
We are perpetuating a moral crime, yet nobody can be "bothered" because they don't have fur, a face, or make cute baby pictures.
#stopthehate
#lawnmowersaregenocide
#christmastreeisahatecrime
-Styopa
These chimps can get copyrights! Don't let that one photographer near them.
http://metro.co.uk/2011/07/14/...
Whee!
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
If the politicians in Congress and Parliament qualify as "legal persons", I guess chimps are over-qualified. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Take a look at how we treat those we consider lower than us. Even if they're human.
What we've learned from our history is the stronger power typically enslaves the weaker, why would you think non-terrestrial intelligence wouldn't enslave us?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I think this is a necessary step and better done today than tomorrow.
Not that I think the chimps themselves right now are deserving of the same rights of personhood as human beings. But as our science advances, the question of what a "person" is will extend past our common genetics: we may soon have gengineered humans, uplifted animals, cybernetic entities (AI) and, unlikely as it may be, perhaps even non-terrestrial intelligences. After all, its taken centuries for many HUMANS to be recognized as fully protected legal entities by other humans. It is better if we have legal precedents set ahead of time so that the rights of these non-human intelligences are protected from the start.
The problem is that people tend to attribute human traits to animals even though those animals never exhibit any human traits. Recent studies proved that dogs don't feel shame, but react to the dominance its owner shows when berating it for doing something bad. Yet every dog owner claims their snookums is special.
Personally I wouldn't mind if they declared dogs to be persons. That ways we could free them from the oppression that is ownership and can stop the fuck from barking at night.
They are people being unlawfully detained so the fix is to send them to a sanctuary? Wouldn't that be like sending groups of humans to reservations? What's next? Smallpox bedding?
Obviously they can't be left to just roam the city. Maybe that's a clue that they are still animals...
They can only sign to you because they were trained to do so as lab animals. So you want a threshold of sign language competence to trigger release from captivity?
I honestly don't know how I feel about lab animals. Some reasonable debate and facts on their treatment and value of what is provided by the research would be nice. Of course I also want honest answers from politicians, so maybe I am just deluding myself.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Take your stinking paws off me you damned dirty ape!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...
Should we treat chimpanzees that way we do? NO
Are chimpanzees feeling, intelligent animals? YES
Are chimpanzees persons? NO
In may cases the way we treat animals or allow them to be treated is appalling. The same is also true of how humans treat other humans, as well. I'm left to wonder how long before the fact that I've had two of my dogs euthanized is no longer a legal act? The thought of having to prolong the suffering of or put them through treatment that has little chance of success and a high chance of increasing their suffering and shortening their lives, pains me deeply. There is a long list of potential unintended consequences to consider.
I'm not sure how one monkey eating another might be affected by a ruling about chimps. It does beg the question about one chimp eating another though!
Damn, but /. has become eat up with Parvorder Nazis.
For the most part we don't use their whole corpse as decoration, just their genitals.
For fucks sake, they are animals, not people. Treat them humanely but not as people. What's next? rats?
Yeah. Having less than ideal limits on how we can treat each other is a lot better than the the 'no legal protections' setups certain people have lived under in our past (and in many places in the world, present).
The U.S. federal government will indefinitely detain or even assassinate a U.S. citizen accused of beign a "terrorist" without so much as a criminal indictment. Obviously that's depriving them of habeus corpus and other Constitutional Rights.
This is deemed legal while a court decides to extend those rights to a pair of chimps?
Consider the implications. The government points a finger at you and says "terrorist!" without presenting a single shred of evidence and your life is suddenly worth less than that of a chimp?
Corporations are legal persons because only legal persons can sign legal documents. The moment they stop being persons, every single contract they are one of the signatories upon are worth precisely as much as the paper it's on, possibly less if it's an electronic document. This is good--as long as they don't own things you need access to or owe you goods, services, and/or money...and it's safe to bet that at least one of these is true. (You thought you had a contract with your employer saying they paid you? Not anymore!)
The real question ought to be, if chimps are legally people, does this mean I can bu...I mean adopt a chimp and have the chimp be legally the owner of my shady business? Maybe even as the CEO of my shell company?
And, most importantly, do they owe taxes?
Actually, there is some pretty good legal precedent for this to move forward, but there is also precedent for it to fail. Current social attitudes and economic factors (people tend not to get personhood until the value in keeping them subhuman has faded) today indicate it will likely fail, but it would not be without precedent if the judge moves forward or even accepts the arguments. We have been expanding personhood for the last century already.
Since the case is pulling on examples from humans who have personhood but not self determination, like children they would probably not have the ability to enter into legal contracts, thus can not volunteer.
While people are scoffing at this, we already have the legal framework in place for dealing with entities that have the legal protection of personhood but not full legal rights.
While this is doomed to fail, much of the mocking has chilling similarities to earlier fights for personhood.
There are plenty of humans who would volunteer for tests with full knowledge and understanding of the risks.
You are vastly overestimating the ability for even the average human to assess such risks, much less a significant majority of the population.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the headline.
Dolphins are about as smart as pigs. The extra grey matter is sonar processing. Functional MRI has removed the mystery.
You'd think a place like /. would have put away this long dis-proven assertion. The guy that first asserted dolphins were as smart as people was on acid at the time and failed to teach them human language or to learn dolphin. Didn't matter how much acid he did, they still didn't talk.
Good gig if you're into that kind of thing.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
... is so common that Wikipedia has its own page dedicated to it.
I'd rather see chimpanzees get that kind of status than corporations. Plus, I'd trust a chimp behavior over a corporation's any day.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
The judicial action could force institutions in New York State to funnel their primate research through 3rd parties that are located in other states or countries or abdicate such research to out-of-state or out-of-USA institutions.
There, fixed that for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually, Magna Carta has some authority in our precedent based system by outlining certain principles. Of course most of it is non-applicable, even in the UK, because it is outdated and mostly repealed. There are only three articles of MC still in force as law in the UK.
MC wasn't really a human rights document, it was more of a good governance and rule of law document. As such, it would have little application to chimps at this point.
Hey, if Florida man has the right to be treated as a human, then these chimps surely should too.
What we've learned from our history is the stronger power typically enslaves the weaker, why would you think non-terrestrial intelligence wouldn't enslave us?
Historically there has been an economic advantage to enslaving people; if you enslaved someone you could get them to do work for you, so you didn't have to do the work yourself.
A non-terrestrial intelligence, contrariwise, would either not be present on Earth (in which case it wouldn't have the ability to enslave anyone on Earth), or if it did get to Earth, it did so by harnessing enough energy to make the trip across interstellar space. Any species capable of harnessing that much energy on its own is unlikely to need to enslave anyone to get its work done. It would be like you or I 'enslaving' a hamster to generate electrical power for our house -- there's not enough benefit to make it worth the effort of doing.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What's this obsession with giving great apes more legal rights, but not other animals. Why not cats, or dolphins?
Neither the judge nor any court has recognized any right or personhood of any animal, merely a hearing was called. There are zero legal implications for non-human primates in that action. Summary was written by agenda-driven person
Nope, God didn't make chimps out of tasty meat but those critter are full of that
Effectively for whom?
How about by genetics?
The DNA between a male ape and a male human is so small it's almost the same amount as the difference between the genders! A great deal of fighting was done just to admit women as equals and that hasn't been won worldwide and nobody seems to treat them as equals yet...
Point is, genetically they are really close to an accepted group (majority actually) which wasn't recognized in the past.
Dolphins only have our brain size; their brains are full of fat. literally. the ocean temperature's impact on submerged body temperature is extremely great compared to the wind. They need fat heads for temperature stability since analog brains function around the influence of environmental factors like temperature impacting all those massively parallel chemical reactions. Your body does a great deal to maintain brain temperature so it can function not because neurons are so much weaker.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The summary writer and at least four other equally ignorant fellows here don't know how to spell this 'difficult' word, and dozens quoted them no problem. Not one latin nazi and no IANALs or IAALs. Anecdotal evidence that Slashdot is rotting away?
Lawyers don't care about them, most of the lawyers are concerned about getting paid and making a name for themselves in the shark tank, err, legal field.
Citation? Disclosure: I work with dolphins and they certainly seem smarter and more pleasant than you.
If corporations are people, and the government can sue a suitcase full of cash, then recognizing chimps is really not that big a deal.
Really. The way our legal system behaves, I'm surprised Bonzo didn't get involved earlier. Now go to bed, Bonzo. Good-night...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Later in the day, the verdict was extended to the rest of the bill of rights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
People mocked the idea that corporations are essentially people. And yet here we are, giving the same rights to chimps.
Well, this is good news for the Librarian I guess, though the wizards at UU seem to treat him pretty humanely already anyway.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Is an idiot. As is the judge.
What the hell has happened to people? How do they come up with this crap?
Common sense is non existent. It's all about how far stupidity can be pushed.
And, apparently, our gov't is just fine with helping it along.
In an era where human rights (like equality before the law and due process) are being trampled in western countries by radical, emotionally driven agendas, animals somehow deserve habeus corpus? What about the prisoners in Guantanamo bay? Those on secret no-fly lists? The behavior of TLAs? National security letters?
Did peta manage to get a presidential department too?
Since they are now recognized will these freeloading bastards now pay taxes as well?
Sure. They can get that witheld from their disability payments, since they'd probably qualify as mentally disabled.
Looking forward to the new generation of Walmart greeters.
Next, they figure out a way for all the cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys to sue over their confinement and death sentences before being sent to your local grocer.
After that all the indoor cat people will be forced to let fluffy out in the street to get run over, or killed by raccoons.
In the end the ants, termites and cockroaches will re-take the planet for themselves. Death to all human slavers.
Why bother lying about Gitmo? I mean, yes, it's useful as an extraterritorial prison, but attributing its continued existence to Obama is bizarrely counterfactual.
Obama issued orders to close Gitmo in 2009. Congress fought back with appropriations bills. The GOP has been and continues to be hugely critical and combative with Obama's attempts to close the detention camp. Romney was openly supportive of it, and a Republican Senator has said the Gitmo detainees can "rot in hell". Are you just completely ignorant of everything that has happened until this point, or are you arguing the President should just ignore the law, Congress, Republicans, and 53% of the country and close it anyway?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Well, if these chimps are persons under the law, then I assume they are here on an H1-B visa and are reporting and paying their taxes based on the housing and food allowance they receive at their employer's place of business. If not, they should be locked up for tax evasion. Likewise, the university in question, I am sure, is paying the employer's share of FICA/Medicare and has verified their I-9 status.
As silly as all of that sounds, if one is a person under the law, then one must comply with all of the laws.
How long before they're eligible for Social Security Supplemental Security Income?
We certainly have Corporate Chimphood.
Table-ized A.I.
Well.. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot but whenever I hear chimps being referred to as monkeys I picture some young earth creationist going around saying something like "my grandmother wasn't no damn monkey".