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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 28 2014, @02:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the Better-the-Chimp-than-Corporations dept.

From the article, paraphrased:

When Steven Wise, a 63-year-old legal scholar in the field of animal law, decided to poke around Circle L Trailer Sales to assess the living conditions of the Reindeer living on the company grounds, he was horrified to discover that a former circus chimpanzee named Tommy was forced to live in inhumane conditions:

A rancid milk-musk odor wafted forth and with it the sight of an adult chimpanzee, crouched inside a small steel-mesh cell. Some plastic toys and bits of soiled bedding were strewn behind him. The only visible light emanated from a small portable TV on a stand outside his bars, tuned to what appeared to be a nature show.

Being sufficiently moved by witnessing that heinous crime, Wise and a few cohorts strolled into the Fulton County Courthouse wielding a legal document the likes of which had never been seen in any of the world's courts, a legal package including a detailed account of the "petitioner's" cruel and unusual solitary confinement along with nine affidavits gathered from leading primatologists, underscoring the physical and psychological damages such living conditions endured by a being with such cognitive capability. Tommy would not, however, have anticipated that he was about to make legal history as the first nonhuman primate to ever sue a human captor in an attempt to gain his own freedom.

Granting rights associated with personhood to non-persons has been discussed extensively before, but would be giving personhood to animals be a dangerous slippery-slope? Would be the mark of a more humane and mature society?

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @06:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @06:26PM (#37324)

    I don't know the answers, but... should infant humans have rights? Like apes, they can't speak, read, or understand much.

    What about invalids?

    What if an implant technology were designed that could grant a treesuperhuman intelligence? Would the tree have rights prior to obtaining such an implant?

  • (Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @06:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @06:31PM (#37327)

    Here's one interesting place to begin studying this:

    "In The Case for Animal Rights, Regan argues that non-human animals bear moral rights. His philosophy aligns broadly within the tradition of Immanuel Kant, though he rejects Kant's idea that respect is due only to rational beings. Regan points out that we routinely ascribe inherent value, and thus the right to be treated with respect, to humans who are not rational, including infants and the severely mentally impaired." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Regan [wikipedia.org]

    My interest is piqued by the mention of Kant.