Our legal system personfies entities such as corporations, ships, and even pieces of land. But animals in our legal world don't have any comparable rights. They’re categorically things.
FIONA ZUBLIN: ‘Kevin Schneider serves as an elephant’s lawyer. Her name is Happy, and in 2006 she made history as the first elephant to pass a crucial intelligence test: She can recognize herself in a mirror. Despite her name, she was dubbed “the Bronx Zoo’s loneliest elephant” by The New York Times because she lives in isolation there, away from the zoo’s other elephants, who injured and killed Happy’s companion pachyderm in 2002. Nevertheless, elephants are social creatures, and Schneider — along with the organization where he serves as executive director, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) — wants her moved to a sanctuary. The case was dismissed by the Bronx Supreme Court on Feb. 20, with the judge saying Happy is “not a person” but admitting that the NhRP’s arguments were persuasive and that she “should be treated with respect and dignity, and … may be entitled to liberty.” The NhRP says it will appeal the case but called the judge’s words “powerful.”
Schneider, 33, began as a volunteer with the organization. After five years, he became its executive director, running the show under the auspices of founder and president Steven Wise… When he first started telling people about his work with NhRP, Schneider says, the response was either blank stares or mocking. Even now people get confused by the concept of the personhood of animals. He’s not arguing that animals are conceptually people, but that they can be personified legally, that they have the capacity for rights… “No animals in our legal world have any rights whatsoever. They’re categorically things,” Schneider says. “If a judge isn’t willing to question that for a chimpanzee or an elephant, what hope do we have for a cow, a pig, a chicken?”…
When Wise began working on the project in earnest in 1985 — before Schneider was born — Wise says he predicted it would take about 30 years before the first cases came up. His prediction was on the money. But Wise’s initial idea hasn’t wavered: When it comes to corporations, ships, even pieces of land, he says, “The only way that any entity is ever protected is if they’re a person”… Current laws about animals largely focus on animal welfare — they don’t question whether an animal is a thing, just how you can ethically treat that thing. So the NhRP’s mission is radical in that sense, and it focuses on elephants and chimpanzees because they’re animals that have been scientifically proven to have the capacity for certain types of thinking: memory, the ability to plan or individual desires…
The gradual changes in values that the NhRP hopes to kick-start could potentially lead to a sea change for all animals, not just the clever ones. And those changes might not get rolling in the United States: The organization is working on getting animals in Argentina and Colombia their rights, little by little. Once those precedents are created, Schneider says, they can take on new life and have influence beyond borders. Another route is legislative: If animal rights organizations like the NhRP can influence legislators to create rights for animals, the fight in the courts will be that much easier’. SOURCE…
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