A Special Announcement and Thank You from NhRP President Steven M. Wise

Nearly forty years ago, I decided to devote my career to confronting the fundamental problem facing animals and their advocates: animals' lack of rights.

My work in the early days was done mostly at my kitchen table, surrounded by dozens, then hundreds, of books and papers. I used every written source I could find on the origins of legal rights, the long history of the struggles for those rights, and the science that helps us humans understand who other animals are.

In the years that followed, drawing on this extensive research and my experience as a lawyer, I began writing my own law review articles and books on why animals are entitled to legal rights as a matter of justice and scientific fact. I began teaching Animal Rights Law at nine law schools, including Harvard and Stanford. I had concluded that the work ahead must focus on persuading judges to transform at least some animals from legal "things" without rights into "persons" with fundamental rights, just as courts had for centuries transformed oppressed humans who struggled in and beyond courtrooms from things into persons.

In 1995, ready to move forward with this mission, I founded the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), the only civil rights organization dedicated solely to securing legal rights for animals.

I was soon joined by other lawyers, then by law students eager for change, and later by scientists studying animals around the world, including Jane Goodall, whose findings would help us lawyers, and ultimately judges, understand. Then came animal advocates who had witnessed first-hand the terrible limits of animal welfare that play out again and again in the lives of animals whose only crime is not being human.

This was only the beginning.

The people in this ever-growing community and on our NhRP team were, like me, deeply troubled by the thinghood of animals and the widespread suffering and injustice it perpetuates. We came together to change the primitive and unjust legal status of animals, for a world in which the rights of animals are protected alongside human rights. We want to build a future in which animals are not held captive in endless suffering behind the real and metaphorical walls we built in the past and can now tear down. We must tear down these walls.

After twenty-two years of deep preparation, in 2007 we began, in an unprecedented way, to bring common lawhabeas corpuscases on behalf of animals. We knew that the litigation and the broader struggle would be complex, serious and long, because it involved persuading judges that the question of animal rights depends not on the mere identity of species, that is, whether or not they are human, but on the values and principles of justice that judges hold most dear, including equality and liberty, and on what animals are by nature.

This deep preparation lasted six years, until 2013, when we filed our first cases. When we filed our cases, the first in the world to demand recognition of animals' legal personhood and right to liberty, this was not merely symbolic. Once the right to liberty was secured, it would be legally enforceable. It could not be overturned by changing political tides. It would be permanent. It would transform the lives of our animal clients, bringing them freedom and dignity, and would not leave them at the mercy of those who profit from their continued imprisonment.

In the decade since then, we have made tremendousprogress, far faster than I could have imagined years ago. We have won the support of experts in animal cognition and behavior, animal law, philosophy, religion and many other fields, as well as people around the world who care about how we view and treat animals. In our chimpanzee and elephant rights cases, we secured the world's firsthabeas corpushearings on behalf of animals. We have expanded into legislation and community advocacy. We are changing the conversation about what members of other species deserve under the law.

Already this year, Ecuador, relying in part on the brief submitted by the NhRP and the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School,recognized animals as rightsholders.In our case seeking the release of Happy the elephant from the Bronx Zoo to a sanctuary, the New York Court of Appeals became the highest English-speaking court to hear a casein which rights were sought for animals. The Atlanticcalledthe case "the most important animal-rights case of the 21st century." In recent weeks, we filed our first nonhuman rights case in California. We will soon continue with cases and campaigns in many jurisdictions in California, Colorado, Israel, India and beyond, and we will share them with you as soon as possible.

We have achieved these successes and grown to this size because every seat at the NhRP table is filled by talented lawyers, communications specialists, development specialists, legislative and community advocacy campaign specialists and nonprofit professionals from whom I learn something every day and with whom I am honored to work. They include many NhRP staff members you have met at our hearings and meetings, interacted with in our Zoom webinars, or seen in news stories about our work. Some are more comfortable behind the scenes, so you may rarely see their faces. But all of them are vital to the legal milestones we have reached in the global fight for nonhuman rights.

Up to this point in our organization's history, I have argued all of our cases; in other words, I have appeared before the court and presented our case to the judges, whether we had ten minutes or ten hours. Many may not realize that the moment we appear before the court, answer the judges' questions and prove that what those holding our clients captive say to maintain the status quo is utterly wrong is the result, and the only possible reason, of the thousands of hours our legal team as a whole spends on argument strategy and preparation. Our team has worked line by line through hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pages of court filings to make sure that every word is exactly right.

In part because of the pride I feel in everyone at the NhRP and everything we have achieved together, I am now thrilled to announce that we are expanding the roster of attorneys who will argue our cases. This expansion will allow us to file more cases, on behalf of more animals, in more jurisdictions, and to show even more powerfully how talented our team is. It will also allow me to devote much more time to what has been a fundamental aspect of our work from the very beginning: educating a broad audience, including the next generation of lawyers, about the urgent need for nonhuman rights and its origins, and speaking with all kinds of people from all over the world who want to join us in this fight.

In Happy's case, the attorney who appeared before the New York Court of Appeals wasMonica Miller, a highly experienced lawyer who has worked with the NhRP since our founding.

Jake Davisargued our California case. In the coming weeks, we will share more detailed information with you, including who our clients are in this case and how you can help.

I hope you are as excited as I am about the global fight for nonhuman rights. This work will require patience, determination, compassion, scientific evidence and rational argument, and it will continue to take time. After all, animals have remained "things" for more than 2,000 years, and among autonomous beings neither Happy nor other elephants are alone. Countless animals look out through prison bars without knowing that there are people out there determined not to exploit them but to free them. As I extend my gratitude to my colleagues at the NhRP, I also extend my gratitude to you, our supporters, who are an important part of this story and this struggle. We may be the ones arguing on Happy's behalf in court, but we know that whether you are in the courtroom or watching from afar, you are with us. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Source:NONHUMAN RIGHTS BLOG

This news article was translated into Turkish by Eylül Özçep.