"Lawsuits on behalf of captive chimpanzees in America could be a turning point in how the judiciary adjudicates on animal rights.
A group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project filed lawsuits on behalf of the chimps claiming they were ‘nonhuman animals’ that had a right to live free from confinement and not be regarded as property but as ‘legal persons’.
The organisation’s website summarized the move:
None of the three cases succeeded and one judge even refused a hearing, but Wise said the real fight would begin before the higher appellant courts." CMI
Chimps are NOT "persons". They are animals. Of course that does not mean humans have the right to abuse them....but they are NOT "persons" either on the same level of creation.
A group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project filed lawsuits on behalf of the chimps claiming they were ‘nonhuman animals’ that had a right to live free from confinement and not be regarded as property but as ‘legal persons’.
The organisation’s website summarized the move:
“These habeas corpus writs are a way of going before the court to argue that our chimpanzee plaintiffs are legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty, based on their level of complex cognition, self-awareness and autonomy, rather than simply pieces of property that can be owned, imprisoned and used for experiments.”The movement is headed by founder and lawyer Steven Wise, who cites evolutionary philosopher Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation as a light-bulb moment in his decision to pursue the animal rights cause.
None of the three cases succeeded and one judge even refused a hearing, but Wise said the real fight would begin before the higher appellant courts." CMI
Chimps are NOT "persons". They are animals. Of course that does not mean humans have the right to abuse them....but they are NOT "persons" either on the same level of creation.
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:26