We often talk about lawyers manufacturing clients in the class action context, but how about creating an entirely new class of clients? Some European activists are embarking on that path, taking their case through the European courts:
In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn’t care for coffee, and he isn’t actually a person — at least not yet.
In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a “person.”
Hiasl’s supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests.
“Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights,” said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.
So far, they haven’t had any luck, but they plan to appeal to higher courts, including “the European Court of Human [sic] Rights, if necessary.” The article notes that not all animal rights activists are supportive, including one “who worries that chimpanzees could gain broader rights, such as copyright protections on their photographs.”
But, surprisingly, Americans may already be ahead of them. It’s not unusual for a family fighting over an estate to fight over the family pets as vehemently as they fight over any other piece of property. But what is unusual is giving the pet a say in the matter, as in a Tennessee case decided this week:
A dogfight over Alex the Golden Retriever was resolved by agreement Monday in Probate Court.
[…]
The agreement, which was approved by Judge Karen Webster, adopted the recommendations of attorney Paul Royal, who was appointed by the court as guardian ad litem to represent Alex’s interests.
Guardians ad litem commonly are appointed to represent minor children or incapacitated adults in court proceedings, but legal observers cannot recall another local case in which one was appointed to represent a dog.
See? Lawyers will never exhaust the supply of clients, because we can always creatively come up with new sources. (And if we run out of pets, we can always adopt the idea first proposed by environmentalists in the 1970s, to allow lawyers to represent trees.)
4 Comments
The jury of his peers concept should make voir dire interesting.
Any entity capable of expressing the conscious opinion that it is a person, and does not wish to be a slave, should be granted recognition as a free person.
I don’t care what its DNA is, or even if it has DNA.
We can then move on to questions of legal competence.
Zoe – good luck with that. You’ve obviously not considered even a small portion of the questions and difficulties such a position would entail.
I have. I work in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
We probably won’t be faced with the prospect of artificial people this century. Probably. Time to think about these issues now, so we have just systems in place when we need them.
It’s just that every test we have for Personhood (when applied to a hypothetical AI) shows Forest and Bonibo chimps as being people, and even African Grey parrots as being thinking beings.
I live next to a halfway house for profoundly intellectually disabled people who happen to be human. They are people notwithstanding their inability to use symbols, or make use of language. The average forest chimp is smarter. So how come killing Chimps painlessly is mere destruction of property, and not some form of felony?
I emphatically do not advocate withdrawing human rights from the intellectually disabled, young children etc. Neither do I advocate treating Chimpanzees as having the same rights as adult humans.
But very basic Person (rather than Human) rights, yes. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. That will do as a start.