Steven Wise: The Nonhuman Rights Project
And when you read some of the decisions of courts who have there have been two of them who simply dismissed our cases because they said only humans can have rights, and they don’t say why only humans can have rights. It’s just simply announced that our client’s not human, so, therefore, they can’t have rights.
We’ve seen that sort of thing over the last 2 or 300 years, and it’s always really painful. There was a time when Black people wanted rights, and the court said, well, you’re not White. Well, what did that have to do with Black people not having right? Or, when women have sought rights, and the court said you’re not a man. I mean, everyone understood that they weren’t a man, but what does being a man have to do with being the only entity who can have rights?
Gay people didn’t have rights, and the courts would say, you’re not heterosexual, you can’t have certain rights. There’s not–just because you’re a man or you’re White, or you’re heterosexual, that doesn’t mean that, if you’re not White or you’re female, or you’re not a man, and you’re not heterosexual, why shouldn’t you have rights, as well?
And the fact that, to date, the courts have simply only dismissed our cases by using one sentence saying, I’m sorry, they’re not humans, that’s also a distinction without a difference. There’s no rational reason, and there’s no reason that harmonizes with their ideas of justice that would support such a decision.
And so, eventually, the courts will begin to understand that in the United States and elsewhere, and then things are going to begin moving very quickly. But, there’s kind of a period in which you have to give the judges time to get used to the fact that you’re making these arguments and the fact that, for 2,000 years, no nonhuman ever has been a person. And so, judges tend to be a conservative voice, and they aren’t about to say, oh, for the last 2,000 years, we’ve been making a mistake. It’s going to take them a while to get used to it.
But, we are extraordinarily persistent. Our legal arguments are actually extraordinarily good. And we bring in the facts about the nonhuman animals on whose behalf we sue, whether chimpanzees or orcas or elephants.
So, it’s really just a matter of time and persistence, and we have plenty of both.
Sandie Sedgbeer: 30 plus years, I mean, that’s a very long time. What kept you going?
Steven Wise: What kept me going was the knowledge that there are billions and billions of nonhuman animals who are being terribly exploited, who are being killed, who are being brutalized in ways that are almost impossible, for us to imagine. And so, I really understand that, and sometimes, I’ve gone out and seen that. And I’m a kind of historian, one of the four books I wrote The History of the Somerset Case, which was a 1772 London case in which slavery ended through–in England through the decision of Lord Mansfield, who was Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench.
And so, I understand how social change works, and I understand how slavery ended, how women have rights and how children got rights. I spent years and years reading about these things. I realized that they start with people like me, people who decided something is wrong, something has to change. I’m going to, pour my life’s energies into being, if I have to be the first person who is going to make that change because every change requires someone to begin making that change.
I understood that that’s what we were doing. And there was a certain goal that I had in mind, which is to get legal rights for nonhuman animals, and they need them. And I’m a lawyer. Why else am I a lawyer? What else could I be doing with my legal skills that would be, that much more important?
Sandie Sedgbeer: Steven Wise, can you explain why recognition of nonhuman rights is the best and most lasting way to change nonhuman animals’ lives for the better? What will change when you get there?
Steven Wise: Well, it’s hard to generalize. There are a million species of animals. I guess you and I are one of them. There are a million others. And they are extraordinarily diverse. So, there may be some nonhuman animals, who are never gonna get rats. I doubt beetles will get rights or crickets will get rights, at least not for hundreds and hundreds of years. I don’t even know what kind of arguments could be used for them. But, many nonhuman animals should have legal rights of some kind like right now. For example, those beings who are autonomous and we can prove it–all four species of grade apes, all three species of elephants, orcas, perhaps African gray parrots and others who we haven’t researched, they are autonomous beings. They can choose how to live their lives, and they live very complex emotional, cognitive and social lives.
And so, gaining them the right to bodily liberty that we argue they should have and that a writ of habeas corpus protects, they should be immediately released from captivity. They should never be held in captivity. And they should either be sent back into the wild or if they can’t, they should be sent to a proper sanctuary where they can live as autonomous life as possible.
And if you have a right to bodily liberty, then you should not be captured in the first place. I once argued many nonhuman animals should have a right to bodily integrity, shouldn’t be able to do what to a human being would be a battery, an unconsented to touching. You can’t, can’t kill them, slam them, shoot them. You basically have to leave them alone. So, those rights would be very important, for wild animals.
There may be other kinds of rights that would be most appropriate for animals who we have domesticated. We think of cats or dogs especially who have become part of our family, and they may have certain kinds of rights because we have domesticated them and basically turned them into beings who both rely upon us and are in important ways, parts of our family and parts of our society. They may have different rights.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Can you tell us a little bit about Tommy and Kiko; they’re two of the chimpanzees that you filed for, please tell us a little bit about their stories, their histories.
Steven Wise: Well, let’s start with Tommy. I met Tommy. He was in a cage in a room in a warehouse-like structure on a piece of land in rural New York, in which people were selling used trailers. And he was by himself. He lived by himself. And, to have a chimpanzee be forced to live by himself, which is essentially being in solitary confinement, influences that chimpanzee the way it would be if you and I were forced to live by ourselves in a cage in solitary confinement.
We are extremely social creatures, as are the chimpanzees. I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time with wild chimpanzees up in the Kibale Mountains in Uganda, and it’s easy to see, how they live in what is called fission-fusion societies in which they have family units. They might have 10 of them or 20 of them or 30 of them that’s in one place, and they live in a community just like you and I would.
And so, just like one human being, they’re forced into solitary, you are no human being. We are turned into something that is unnatural for us to be.
Kiko was also living in a cage in a storefront in Niagara Falls, and Kiko actually had had a chimp, another chimpanzee with him, and we were going to file a lawsuit on his behalf, as well, but he died before we were able to even file the first lawsuit. So, he also is the only chimpanzee. There are other nonhuman primates around. There are some monkeys around, and they’re living in their cages.
Kiko also is partially deaf. Kiko was used in movies, and when Kiko didn’t do what she was supposed to do, she was beaten on the head so badly that she’s partially deaf.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Steven Wise
