Cyndi's Two Cents

Elephant rights

While hosting a group of young farmers at Brownfield’s broadcasting headquarters, I asked what issues were top of mind for them. The first farmer said U.S.-China trade relations is his greatest concern.  Another farmer spoke about over-regulation in agriculture and how thankful he is for the new clean water rule.  The next one to speak went down a different path entirely.  Her concern: the legal rights of a pachyderm in the Bronx.

The “personhood” and rights of Happy, a 47-year old Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo were to be argued in The New York Supreme Court the next day.  I was familiar with this case, as I have followed its progress for some time and have even written about it here.  No one else in the group knew about it.  All were in disbelief.

For more than a decade, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) has used a legal recourse called a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of animals. Cornell University Law explains that a writ of habeas corpus is used to bring a prisoner or other detainee before the court to determine if the person’s imprisonment or detention is lawful. A habeas petition proceeds as a civil action against the State agent (usually a warden) who holds the defendant in custody.

On December 14, Justice Tracey A. Bannister heard the arguments, which focused on why an autonomous being is a legal person with the fundamental right to bodily liberty protected by a common law write of habeas corpus.  This proceeding was the world’s first habeas corpus hearing on behalf of a pachyderm and the second habeas corpus hearing on behalf of a nonhuman in the United States.  Earlier this year, The New York Court of Appeals denied the motion by NhRP to review a lower court’s ruling that two caged chimpanzees were not subject to the law of habeas corpus. In 2016, a similar case involving a chimpanzee in Argentina had different results, with the primate being declared a “non-human legal person” with “inherent rights”.

All animals in India have certain rights.  The Supreme Court of that country ruled so in 2014.  In 2015, a judge at the Delhi High Court determined all birds have a fundamental right to fly, ordering a defendant to open the cages of birds he was holding captive.

Justice Bannister of the New York Supreme Court has yet to rule whether the writ of habeas corpus applies to the 47-year old Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo, but NhRP remains positive.

This whole thing probably seems a little silly at first glance, but the slope is slippery.  If a chimpanzee or an elephant is given the same rights that you and I as citizens of this great country enjoy, it could set into motion a veritable explosion of animal rights claims.