Author Archives: Steve

This week I watched a paradigm shift on PBS’s “NewsHour.” Discussing whether chimpanzees, our genetic first cousins, should be subjected to biomedical experimentation, the show focused on a San Antonio primate concentration camp named “The Texas Biomedical Institute”. The Texas … Continue reading →

It’s time again to “Ask the Animal Rights Lawyer.” Every American state has a statute that makes it a crime to be cruel to nonhuman animals; don’t these statutes give animals legal rights? Anti-cruelty statutes do not give nonhuman animals … Continue reading →

This week I learned that Joyce Tischler’s, A Brief History of Animal Law, Part II (1985 – 2011), was published in the on-line Stanford Journal of Animal Law and Policy. It follows her A Brief History of Animal Law, Part … Continue reading →

In a recent blog, I observed that Missouri went half-way towards disgracing itself to future eyes … again … when its House of Representatives passed a bill providing: “The laws of this state shall not confer upon any animal a … Continue reading →

Two interesting events recently intersected in the “Show-Me” state. On March 12, by a vote of 116-33, the Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill that says: “The laws of this state shall not confer upon any animal a right, … Continue reading →

Nature recently announced the sequencing of the genome of the fifth, and last great ape, the gorilla. It is significant the authors regarded gorillas as one of the “non-human great apes.” Common chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans are the other three “nonhuman … Continue reading →

The Nonhuman Rights Project encounters a great deal of misinformation and misunderstanding about “animal rights” (this does not mean “animal law” or “animal welfare” or “animal protection”; it means “animal rights”). This week the NhRP introduces a new occasional blog … Continue reading →

Early this coming Saturday morning, members of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s Legal Working Group will gather in an apartment on Manhattan’s West Side. For the rest of the day two stories will unfold. The first continues the making of the … Continue reading →

With “The Daily Show’s,” Wyatt Cenac’s, smackdown of the SeaWorld lawsuit this week (“so orcas are like the field niggers and dogs and cats are the house niggers”), PETA’s misbegotten adventure is stumbling to a close. But lawyers who saw … Continue reading →

PETA’s wipeout this week in the US District Court in San Diego in Tillikum v. SeaWorld was as predictable (the Nonhuman Rights Project predicted it and tried to head it off) as it was complete. It did not have to … Continue reading →

We begin with a quiz. This week, in the ongoing case in Federal Court in San Diego in which PETA alleges that orcas imprisoned by SeaWorld are slaves within the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, … Continue reading →

Animal rights jurisprudence – the idea that a nonhuman animal can be a legal person with a legal right – is in the air. And that is becoming a problem for the Nonhuman Rights Project. Our dozens of researchers have … Continue reading →

This week NBC broadcast a Harry’s Law episode called “Gorilla My Dreams.” A lawyer tries to attain legal personhood for an escaped gorilla in a courtroom. Okay, much of what was discussed was wrong. Some European countries already consider apes “legal … Continue reading →

The Nonhuman Rights Project has a different approach “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” “We can use my Dad’s barn!” Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland played out scenes similar to this one from Babes in Toyland in half a … Continue reading →

The prestigious science magazine “Nature” (Feb. 24, 2011) carried an editorial entitled “Animal rights and wrongs.” On the following page there appeared another editorial, “Rights for all.” The first of these furthered Nature’s long-standing knee-jerk opposition to the idea of any … Continue reading →

I am often asked why the Nonhuman Rights Project is litigating to win common law personhood for at least some nonhuman animals. Why not claim that a chimpanzee, say, or dolphin, is a “person” as that word is used in … Continue reading →

If you’ve read the previous blog entries, you know why the Nonhuman Rights Project is unique in the history of the world. For years it has been preparing to litigate the most far-reaching and important legal question that has ever … Continue reading →

To understand which legal rights the Nonhuman Rights Project is demanding for nonhuman animals, we need to understand what legal rights are. During World War I, a young Yale law professor, Wesley Hohfeld, tried to understand what judges mean when … Continue reading →

There’s a story that Abraham Lincoln agreed, near the end of the American Civil War, to meet with Peace Commissioners from South Carolina who wished to discuss ending the war. They didn’t get far, for Lincoln told them, “As President, … Continue reading →

After last week, we should have some idea what the common law is about. But we need to understand that the common law is made by human judges. In “Rattling the Cage – Toward Legal Rights for Animals”, I set … Continue reading →

Last week I wrote that the goals of the Nonhuman Rights Project are to educate and persuade the judges of an American state high court that a nonhuman animal has the capacity to possess common law rights. The last six … Continue reading →

The goals of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) are to educate and persuade an American state high court that a nonhuman animal has the capacity to possess common law rights. This task is only for the most determined.

Every nonhuman animal has always been a legal thing in Western law. Since we can eat, vivisect, buy, sell, hunt, ride, trap, and kill nonhuman animals almost at whim, it should be obvious that it is very bad to be … Continue reading →