Known as the Great Writ, the writ of habeas corpus has long been celebrated for its flexibility and potential to evolve. Throughout history, it has been flexibly used to challenge unjust confinements, including the unjust confinement of individuals with few or no rights, such as enslaved people, women, and children. This history supports our use of the Great Writ to challenge the unjust confinement of Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo.
The position that only humans can have rights is arbitrary and irrational because it ignores the central importance of the elephants’ proven autonomy and extraordinary cognitive complexity. In Colorado, autonomy is a supreme and cherished common law value, which lies at the heart of the right to liberty. Accordingly, to exclude elephants from invoking the protections of habeas corpus despite their proven autonomy is to hold that autonomy does not matter. It is to hold that the fundamental principles of justice, liberty, and equality, which command the protection of autonomy, do not matter either.
The Colorado Supreme Court thus has a choice to make: it can either affirm the fundamental values and principles that courts are duty-bound to uphold, or it can reject them. We contend that it must do the former, as the latter is untenable.
