Mark Goldfeder

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2013

Abstract

On December 2, 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NHRP), a national nonprofit organization working to get actual legal rights for members of nonhuman species filed a lawsuit in Fulton County, New York petitioning the judges for a writ of habeas corpus. A habeas corpus allows for a person being held captive to be brought before a court to determine if their imprisonment is lawful. Habeas corpus suits are filed all the time; what made this one historic was that it was not filed for a human being. The writ in question asked the court to formally recognize that a 26 year old chimpanzee named Tommy was a person, possessing the legal right to not be bodily detained against his will. One day later, the NHRP filed a similar suit in Niagara Falls, and two days after that a third one on Long Island. All three lawsuits failed, with all three judges declining to sign the order. One judge held a hearing to explain that while he is indeed an animal lover, he just could not or apply NY Code-Article 70: Habeas Corpus to a chimpanzee. Another judge, on a phone hearing, was sympathetic to the cause but did not want to “be the one to make that leap of faith. Still, regardless of the outcome, the reasoning behind the lawsuit is quite simple; the NHRP and its supporters believe that the line between ‘persons’ and ‘nonpersons’ should not be as sharply drawn as it is now. They believe that the current division is artificial and superficial; a line that focuses on microscopic differences in DNA rather than on important and meaningful characteristics, qualities, and emotions that species other than humans might well share

Source Publication

Global Journal of Animal Law

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