Christine Lepisto on Treehuggers became quite excited when a New York court granted habeas corpus to a pair of research chimpanzees:
The case involves a legal right known as “writ of habeas corpus,” intended to offer protection to people who may have been unlawfully imprisoned or detained. The writ of habeas corpus traditionally applies only to human beings. The judge’s ruling (pdf) requires that the institute “detaining” Hercules and Leo must show cause why the Nonhuman Rights Project should not be granted an order permitting them to take custody of the chimps upon determination that they are being unlawfully detained.
According to the Nonhuman Rights Project press release:
Under the law of New York State, only a “legal person” may have an order to show cause and writ of habeas corpus issued in his or her behalf. The Court has therefore implicitly determined that Hercules and Leo are “persons.”
NPR reports that the court has now backpedaled:
The judge in the case has amended her ruling to strike out the term “writ of habeas corpus.” It is now unclear whether Hercules and Leo, the chimps at Stony Brook University, can challenge their detention. You can read our post about the amended order here. …But Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University who opposes personhood for animals, told Science, “It would be quite surprising if the judge intended to make a momentous substantive finding that chimpanzees are legal persons if the judge has not yet heard the other side’s arguments.”
Science magazine has a quick summary (also available through NPR):
The case began as a salvo of lawsuits filed by NhRP in December 2013. The group claimed that four New York chimpanzees—Hercules and Leo at Stony Brook, and two others on private property—were too cognitively and emotionally complex to be held in captivity and should be relocated to an established chimpanzee sanctuary. NhRP petitioned three lower court judges with a writ of habeas corpus, which is traditionally used to prevent people from being unlawfully imprisoned. By granting the writ, the judges would have implicitly acknowledged that chimpanzees were legal people, too—a first step in freeing them.
The judges quickly struck down each case, however, and NhRP has been appealing ever since. Today’s decision is the group’s first major victory. In her ruling, New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe orders a representative of Stony Brook University to appear in court on 6 May to respond to NhRP’s petition that Hercules and Leo “are being unlawfully detained” and should be immediately moved to a chimp sanctuary in Florida. Both animals have been used to understand the evolution of human bipedalism. (Stony Brook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Which reminds me of a quote from the venerable Robert A. Heinlein, helpfully found on Wikiquote:
“Soul?” Does a dog have a soul? How about cockroach?
Yes? Maybe? So are animals damaged persons? If you give a lion and a lamb both personhood, and then … well, I trust the thrust of that is obvious, but not the answer. No doubt this has been thrashed out somewhere, but I don’t happen to know where that might be. I cannot imagine being savage towards my cats, but they can sure be savage to the rodents crossing their paths.
Perhaps the best way to consider this is related to that old aphorism:
The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members.
– many sources
We may not have to make animals into persons (although if this intrigues you, see master writer Cordwainer Smith), but how we treat them may be our measure. For all that we use them to improve our medicines….
