If lifeless corporations are legal persons, then equality principles and justice demand granting legal personhood to sentient, or at least particularly intelligent, nonhuman animals. As living beings that can suffer pain or experience pleasure, sentient nonhuman animals are closer to human beings than are lifeless corporations. However, according to the courts, assigning personhood to nonhuman animals under any constitutional provisions is deemed to be highly problematic, since it 'would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society'.
RICHARD L. CUPP: A common argument for extending legal personhood to at least some nonhuman animals is that courts grant legal personhood to corporations and, if lifeless corporations are legal persons, then equality principles and justice demand granting legal personhood to sentient or at least particularly intelligent nonhuman animals… As living beings that can suffer pain or experience pleasure, sentient or highly intelligent nonhuman animals are in some respects closer to human beings than are lifeless corporations…
Legal personhood would enable legal standing for such nonhuman animals to bring or participate in legal proceedings implicating their interests through legal guardians, akin to how human children may be parties in legal proceedings represented by guardians. Corporations’ legal personhood2 has enabled corporations to bring lawsuits for alleged violations of their constitutional rights, including the constitutional right of “equal protection of the laws”…
Several highly publicized lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking legal personhood for intelligent nonhuman animals such as chimpanzees and elephants, and it is notable that these lawsuits have avoided pleading violation of the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis of their claims… The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits states from depriving any person “equal protection of the laws,” and the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment has been interpreted as applying this prohibition to the federal government… Most of these lawsuits have instead focused on seeking a writ of habeas corpus under state common law12,14,15 (ie, law derived from judicial decisions rather than the Constitution or statutes),13 perhaps reflecting recognition of the particularly exceptional challenge of convincing courts to apply the Constitution to animals…
Although arguing that sentient nonhuman animals should have equal protection rights if such rights are granted to corporations has been appealing to many advocates, a growing body of judicial decisions has firmly rejected animal-corporation comparisons regarding legal personhood. For example, in 2022, New York State’s highest court dismissed a lawsuit seeking a writ of habeas corpus in the name of an elephant kept at a zoo.12 The lawsuit demanded that the elephant be moved to a sanctuary, which the plaintiff believed to be a better environment for the elephant. Habeas corpus means “produce the body” and is used to bring a detained or imprisoned person to court for a
challenge regarding the lawfulness of the person’s confinement.
While listing reasons that the lawsuit must fail, the court stated “[n]or does any recognition of corporate and partnership entities as legal ‘persons’ lend support to petitioner’s claim. Corporations
are simply legal constructs through which human beings act and corporate entities, unlike nonhuman animals, bear legal duties in exchange for legal rights”… the legal personhood of entities such as corporations is grounded in the interests and duties of humans, and thus courts have deemed treating corporations as responsible actors with some rights within our legal system as appropriate. No animals possess sufficient capacity to hold them morally responsible under our legal system.
Society is evolving to demand greater protections for sentient animals, and the US legal system is increasingly providing stronger protections. However, assigning constitutional personhood to nonhuman animals under the Fourteenth Amendment or under any other constitutional provisions would be highly problematic (eg, a 2022 appellate decision noted that allowing an elephant to invoke habeas corpus protections — analogous to personhood in the scope of its implications — “would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society”12) and is quite unlikely, given the approaches to
constitutional interpretation that are currently dominant in US courts. SOURCE…
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