It only takes one court wanting to make history to shatter the important moral principle of human exceptionalism.
Here we go again. Several years ago, the radical Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) sued in New York to have chimps declared “persons.” The case lost in the trial court and, ultimately, the court of appeals (the highest court in the state) refused to review it.
But one high-court judge took the time to issue a concurring opinion (citing an animal-rights-promoting book) opining that while review would have been wrong, whether chimps should be proper subjects for a writ of habeas corpus is appropriate, in part because denying the right is “based on nothing more than the premise that a chimpanzee is not a member of the human species.”
Next, the NhRP brought a lawsuit in New York to have a (now deceased) elephant named Happy, which (not who!) had resided at the Bronx Zoo for decades, declared a person. The lawsuit lost but did better. Not only did the court of appeals hear the case, but two — count ’em — two judges out of seven said that Happy should be declared a person with rights and, moreover, ludicrously compared the differing treatment between animals and humans with the discriminatory laws that once allowed slavery and denied equality to women.
Undaunted, the NhRP moved on to litigate in Hawaii, again seeking to have two Indian elephants declared persons. After losing in the lower courts, the case was just accepted for hearing at Hawaii’s supreme court. From the NhRP’s press release:
“This is a historic moment for Mari and Vaigai and for the broader effort to secure fundamental legal rights for animals,” said Jake Davis, Senior Staff Attorney at the Nonhuman Rights Project and lead counsel in the case. “By agreeing to hear this case, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court has recognized the significance of the legal questions presented. Mari and Vaigai have spent decades deprived of their freedom. We look forward to presenting their case before Hawaiʻi’s highest court and demonstrating why the common law should protect their fundamental interest in liberty.”
This is a bad sign, as there was no pressing legal issue requiring the high court’s intervention. Refusing to hear the case would have ended it.
Be very clear: The real goal in these cases isn’t elephant freedom or happiness. From a story on the litigation:
The case aims to confer to the elephants the same constitutional rights that protect people. It argues Honolulu is violating the longtime zoo residents’ rights by exhibiting them in enclosures, violating their rights to self-determination as autonomous sentient beings.
“Deprived of their freedom.” A “right to self-determination” as “autonomous sentient beings.” What baloney.
If the NhRP wins, the elephants will still not be “free.” They will not be returned to the wild. Rather, their ownership will simply be transferred to the group for placement in an elephant sanctuary. The elephants will have utterly no say in the matter.
Moreover, the ultimate goal of NhRP and all animal-rights believers — as distinguished from animal-welfare advocacy — is to reduce our status to that of animals, i.e., a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. (Yes, I know that biologically we are animals, too — as are flies, oysters, and worms — but the human-vs.-animal distinctions we are addressing here are moral categories.)
A victory in court for the NhRP would be extremely harmful to society, as it would breach the “species barrier” leading ultimately to “animal standing” in courts, which would allow animal-rights radicals to repeatedly sue to stifle their instrumental uses. Imagine the intentional havoc they would cause!
This case should be tossed out of court and the NhRP sanctioned with monetary damages for filing a frivolous lawsuit. But that won’t happen. We live in an irrational era. And it only takes one court wanting to make history to shatter the important moral principle of human exceptionalism.
I am very worried that such a court just might sit in Hawaii.