Chimps get human rights
For the first time in US history, a judge has decreed that two chimpanzees held at a university research facility are covered by the same laws that govern the detention of humans, effectively rendering the animals as “people” in the eyes of law.
New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe said that the apes, held at Stony Brook University for research purposes, are covered by a writ of habeas corpus — a basic legal principle that lets people challenge the validity of their detention. The decision comes two years after the Non-human Rights Project, an animal rights group, brought legal cases in a bid to free four chimpanzees. The group said the animals — Hercules and Leo at Stony Brook University, and two others on private property — were being unlawfully imprisoned and should be relocated.
INTELLIGENCE MATTERS
Three
lower court judges dismissed the cases as they were raised in 2013, but the Nonhuman Rights Project appealed, eventually convincing Jaffe that the animals were sufficiently intelligent to grant them what amounts to basic human rights.
Jaffe has ordered a Stony Brook representative to appear in court on May 6 to reply to the Nonhuman Rights Project’s petition. It could be that the judge organised the hearing to listen to both sides of the case before making a decision.
Richard Cupp, a Law professor at California’s Pepperdine University told Science, it would be “quite surprising” if the judge made “a momentous substantive finding” that chimps were legally people without both parties being able to have their say.
But Natalie Prosin, the Nonhuman Rights Project’s executive director, said that regardless of whether Hercules and Leo are afforded legal personhood after the hearing, the group intends to use the judge’s ruling in future cases.
Source: www.theverge.com
Three court judges had dismissed the cases… but the Nonhuman Rights Project appealed, convincing the current judge that the animals were sufficiently intelligent to grant them what amounts to basic human rights