[LINK] "Elephants are people too (or soon could be)"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera America's Sadhbh Walshe notes that advocates for the legal personhood of intelligent animals are now turning to elephants.

[Elephants cannot] choose to leave their show business profession. Yet this may be about to change, as one mystery elephant prepares to make legal history by challenging its captivity in an American courtroom.

The elephant’s identity is currently secret until the court papers are filed, to avoid tipping off the animal’s owners. But lawyers at the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) have already lined up a sanctuary to take the elephant if the ruling goes their way.

In order to prevail, however, the NhRP has to convince a judge that this elephant is not a thing lacking legal standing but a person with the capacity for at least some of the basic rights typically reserved for humans — namely bodily liberty. If successful, the case could radically alter the legal status of some animals. Even if unsuccessful, it is likely to trigger a debate over just exactly how “personhood” is legally defined and whether or not it should be reserved for human beings.

When human beings are being held against their will, they have the right to petition a court for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their captivity. The NhRP’s goal is to extend the same habeas corpus protections to at least some captive animals by having the courts recognize their legal personhood.

According to the NhRP’s founder, Steven Wise, when he began this work 30 years ago, people would react with disbelief at suggestions that animals could be anything other than property. But today, as more and more species are being listed as endangered and awareness grows about the suffering captive animals are subjected to, Wise believes that gaining personhood rights for at least some highly intelligent species or closely related ones like chimpanzees is not just attainable but inevitable.