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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Animal Rights, Animal Wrongs: The Case for Nonhuman Personhood


Steven M. Wise
STEVEN M. WISE is President of the Nonhuman Rights Project. He has practiced animal
protection law for 30 years throughout the United States. He is the author of four books,
including Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (2000) and Drawing the Line:
Science and the Case for Animal Rights (2003).
Around the world, what the media often refer to as the animal rights movement
is taking off. Mass protests, fierce lobbying, litigation1, and draft treaties have led to
new legislation at the national, provincial, and city levels. It is now forbidden to use great
apes in biomedical research, to bullfight in Catalonia, and to operate factory farms and
5slaughterhouses without adhering to the stricter rules governing the treatment and living
conditions of livestock. However, with a few exceptions, these efforts are not truly about
animal rights but about animal welfare.
One reason for this difference is that worldwide, animals are regarded as legal
things, incapable of having rights and treated as articles of property. In contrast,
10humans are deemed legal persons, possessing intrinsic value and the capacity for an
infinite number of legal rights as the owners of legal things. Another reason is that the
term animal encompasses the enormously diverse biological kingdom of animalia,
which comprises more than 1.25 million known species (with more to be discovered)
that fall along a vast continuum of consciousness, sentience, general intelligence, and
15autonomy. It includes 60,000 vertebrates: 5,500 mammals, 10,000 birds, 6,200
amphibians, 30,000 fish, and 8,200 reptiles. The million-plus known invertebrates
include about 950,000 varieties of insects, 81,000 mollusks, and 40,000 crustaceans.
At one end of this spectrum of mental capacity and awareness are animals such
as sponges, jellyfish, and sea anemones that scientists believe are unlikely to be
20conscious or have an ability to feel pain or suffer. These are therefore unlikely to be
appropriate subjects of animal welfare legislation (which focuses on preventing
unnecessary pain and suffering), though they may be protected by environmental or
conservation laws.
At some point along this continuum2, however, a primitive level of
25consciousness and sentience3 kicks in. A great number of animals fall in this category,
such as cows and sheep. These animals have been the subject of welfare legislation
1 Litigation: (n) the act of litigating; lawsuit.
1

ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when early animal welfare
movements in the United Kingdom sought to end cruel practices such as beatings and
other inhumane treatment. Since then, the animal rights movement has struggled to
30make further progress with these types of animals. In 2000, an international group of
venerable4 animal welfare organizations proposed the Universal Declaration on Animal
Welfare (UDAW), which sought to reduce unnecessary cruelty toward the suffering of
animals. In 2005, an intergovernmental steering committee was assembled to improve
UDAWs chances of adoption. It received endorsements from a number of national
35veterinary associations, the World Organization for Animal Health, the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Council of the European Union. UDAWs
organizing values embrace the principles that animated the nineteenth-century
anticruelty legislation.
Animals at the continuums other endincluding great apes, cetaceans (whales,
40dolphins, and porpoises), and elephantspossess a complex consciousness and selfconsciousness, exquisite5 sentience, robust6 general intelligence, and a powerful
sense of autonomy7. They, too, have long received some protection from unnecessary
cruelty. But rapid scientific advances over the last half century have demonstrated that
their advanced levels of cognition8 leave them inadequately protected by anticruelty
45and similar legislation.
For example, chimpanzees can reflect upon their thoughts. They have powerful
memories, can anticipate and prepare for the future, and even have a sense of moral
agencythey ostracize9 those who violate social norms and respond negatively to

2 Continuum: (n) a continuous extent or whole, the parts of which cannot be


5separately identified.
3 Sentience: (n) the capacity to receive sensation; ability to perceive.
4 Venerable: (adj) deserving honor, respect, or reverence because of advanced
age, noble character, or dignified position.
5 Exquisite: (adj) very beautiful; made in a lovely or delicate way.
106 Robust: (adj) strong, healthy, and full of energy.
7 Autonomy: (n) freedom and independence; self-governance.
8 Cognition: (n) the mental acts or processes by which knowledge is acquired or
processed.
2
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inequitable10 situations. When playing economic games, chimpanzees


50spontaneously11 make fair offers and have a simple understanding of numbers. They
have a material, social, and symbolic culture. For example, through a discipline known
as chimpanzee archaeology [2], it was discovered that some 4,300 years ago, chimps
living in the rainforests of the Ivory Coast used stone tools to crack nuts. They passed
this cracking technique over 200 generations of chimpanzees. These and other
55scientific advances have catalyzed a new and growing twenty-first-century animal
rights movement that demands legal rights to protect these animals fundamental
interests.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, which I lead, is a pioneer when it comes to
pushing for animal rights. We are working with legal groups on three other continents to
60assist them in achieving legal personhood for nonhuman animals. We filed the first
animal rights cases in the United States in 2013, in which we argued that four
chimpanzeesTommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leowere being held unlawfully by their
alleged owners and were entitled to be released pursuant to a common-law writ of
habeas corpus (one of the attractions of a common-law writ of habeas corpus is that it
65allows us to file suit on behalf of another who is being imprisoned). Our goal is to have
these and other autonomous12 and self-determining animals declared to be legal
persons, at least when it comes to unlawful detention.
The roots of the animal rights movement do not lie in the anticruelty legislation of
the nineteenth century; they reach deeper into the worldwide antislavery movements
70that began in the eighteenth century and flowered into the broad international human
rights movement of the twentieth century.
These newer animal rights campaigners demands for fundamental legal rights
for nonhumans are often misinterpreted as demanding human rights for nonhuman
animals. But that is not correct; the new animal rights practitioners recognize that our
75subjects are not human. We are demanding legal rights that are appropriate to the
levels of cognition that scientists are able to determine through their work with
nonhuman animals both in the wild and in captivity. Therefore, chimpanzees are entitled
to chimpanzee rights, elephants to elephant rights, and orcas to orca rights.
9 Ostracize: (trans v) to exclude or shun, by general agreement of the group
imposing the exclusion.
10 Inequitable: (adj) not equitable; biased; unfair.
11 Spontaneously: (adj) happening in a free way; not forced.
2012 Autonomous: (adj) free and independent, as a state or an organism; selfgoverning.
3

The Nonhuman Rights Project spent years determining in which jurisdiction13 it


80would file its initial cases, finally settling on New York State. We identified seven
chimpanzees and decided to file suit on behalf of two. But they both died, as did a third,
before we could sue. We decided to pursue our case on behalf of the four survivors.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks, among other things, to
humanitys dignity, entitlement to equal and inalienable rights, recognition as a legal
85person, and rights to life, liberty, equality, security, and freedom from enslavement.
There is no rational reason why autonomous and self-determining nonhuman animals
should not also possess equal and inalienable rights, recognition as a legal person, and
rights to life, liberty, equality, security, and freedom from enslavement.
Over the centuries, we humans have slowly and painfully developed a core of
90near universal values and principles intended to protect our most fundamental interests.
It is time we recognize that we share the planet with other species with similar
fundamental interests and that our failure to protect those interests both wrongs the
animals and subverts the core values and principles that protect our own.
Copyright 2016 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
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Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-04-28/animal-rights-animal-wrongs

13 Jurisdiction: (n) the right or authority to interpret and administer the law.
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