Dear John,
In the spring of 2015, Justice Barbara Jaffe of the New York State Supreme Court (the state’s court of first resort, which is confusingly named) became the first US judge to hold a habeas corpus hearing for a nonhuman animal. At stake was the freedom of chimpanzees Hercules and Leo, two of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s first clients. Ten years ago today, Justice Jaffe ruled against Hercules and Leo, who were then imprisoned in a basement lab at Stony Brook University, because she considered herself “bound” by the precedent of a higher court. Nevertheless, Justice Jaffe’s decision contains notable language in support of our efforts, and the NhRP continues to cite this language in our legal pleadings to this day.
When I learned of the Jaffe decision (before I joined the NhRP as a staff attorney in 2020), I initially dismissed it as but another judicial opinion that didn’t go far enough. After all, the NhRP argues for our clients’ right to liberty in order to free them, bottom line. Then, something happened that seemed miraculous to me. The day after the Jaffe decision came out, Stony Brook announced it would no longer use Hercules and Leo in research. To give you an idea of how remarkable this was, the Stony Brook scientist in charge of their exploitation told Science mere weeks before: “I see them as collaborators, as willing participants in the project … I think giving them personhood status is a sham. If anyone treats them like people, it’s us.”
Thereafter began multiple efforts, including by the NhRP, to secure Hercules and Leo’s release to a sanctuary following their return to the New Iberia Research Center, which had leased them to Stony Brook when they were young. A little over seven years ago, they were released to Project Chimps sanctuary, where they live today.
In my view, it’s unlikely Stony Brook would have ended its exploitation of Hercules and Leo without Justice Jaffe weighing the merits of our case the way she did. Although I was disappointed she didn’t outright free the chimpanzees, her opinion had a tangible impact on their lives. Accordingly, at that time I decided to look closer at what she wrote.
In her decision, Justice Jaffe mused:
Efforts to extend legal rights to chimpanzees are understandable; some day they may even succeed. Courts, however, are slow to embrace change, and occasionally seem reluctant to engage in broader, more inclusive interpretations of the law … As Justice Kennedy observed in Lawrence v Texas, “times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress.” The pace may now be accelerating.
Beyond this moment of reflection–which linked Hercules and Leo’s case to two landmark US Supreme Court decisions on social justice issues, including a decision that legalized same-sex marriage a month earlier–Justice Jaffe granted the NhRP several important procedural victories. For example:
- She found the NhRP had standing to bring the case; standing is the most common reason animal welfare and animal rights cases are dismissed.
- She rejected the so-called “floodgate” or “slippery slope” argument (the idea that recognizing a legal right for Hercules and Leo will open the door to rights for every nonhuman animal).
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She found that who counts as a legal “person” is “a matter of policy and not a question of biology,” “not necessarily synonymous with being human.”
Anyone who follows our work will understand why this last concession is especially important.
After revisiting the case, reflecting on the hearing, and re-reading Justice Jaffe’s decision, one thing became clear to me and is all the more clear to me today: Justice Jaffe was judicially honest. Judicial honesty, which can also be referred to as judicial integrity, is the ethical conduct and behavior of judges, encompassing their commitment to impartiality, fairness, and upholding the law. One would assume this is the baseline for the judicial profession. In my experience, however, when litigating for nonhuman animals, it is exceedingly rare to experience judicial honesty. Justice Jaffee was the exception; she did what nobody else had done before. She gave two nonhuman animals their day in court, and she rejected common refrains for not hearing cases like theirs.
True victory is not possible without victories like this one, even when they don’t directly free our clients. The NhRP’s founder, Steven Wise, taught us moments like these must occur before the legal wall that unjustly separates humans from all other animals finally begins to crumble. Justice Jaffe’s judicial honesty formed the first major crack in that wall. And it will keep crumbling if we persist. Thank you for helping us do that.
Jake Davis
Senior Staff Attorney, the NhRP
P.S. Interested in sharing this email? We’ve published it on our blog.
