Hi John! As you might know, May is an important month in the history of the Nonhuman Rights Project and the animal rights movement.
One year ago today, in a hearing for Happy the elephant covered by media around the world, New York’s highest court heard arguments in support of animal rights for the first time. As acclaimed historian Jill Lepore wrote, “No case like [Happy’s] has ever reached so high a court, anywhere in the world.”
In May of 2018, five years into our litigation challenging centuries of animals’ rightlessness, a judge on the same court issued an opinion in our chimpanzee rights cases, writing: “To treat a chimpanzee as if he or she had no right to liberty … is to regard the chimpanzee as entirely lacking independent worth, as a mere resource for human use, a thing the value of which consists exclusively in its usefulness to others. Instead, we should consider whether a chimpanzee is an individual with inherent value who has the right to be treated with respect.”
In May of 2015, chimpanzees Hercules and Leo became the first nonhuman beings to have habeas corpus hearings on the lawfulness of their imprisonment.
Each of these anniversaries made legal history for animals. Please register to join us on Thursday, May 25th at 11 a.m. Eastern time for a special Zoom conversation with NhRP Litigation Director Elizabeth Stein and NhRP Senior Staff Attorney Monica Miller about why these hearings and this opinion are so important and what they tell us about the battles ahead.
