Legal Personhood for Animals: Has Science Made Its Case?

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The commentary discusses the recent movement by animal rights organizations to secure legal personhood for animals in various courts in the United States. Laws, regulations, and legal jurisprudence are often influenced by scientific and societal developments. However, legal challenges on behalf of animals residing in zoological facilities using habeas corpus, a mechanism traditionally used by prisoners to challenge conditions of confinement, have been unsuccessful in each state and federal court that has considered the issue. Courts have been unwilling to include nonhuman animals within the meaning of “person” or afford them the legal rights and protections that humans receive in the American legal system. An analysis of these legal personhood decisions reveals that courts have rejected animals’ complex cognitive abilities as a justification for an extension of the law. Courts have been careful to state that societal-changing legal developments must originate in the legislatures, not the courts, and emphasize that significant societal and ethical issues may occur if animals are extended the legal rights and protections afforded to humans. ABSTRACT: The use of Latin in identifying an organism’s genus and species is likely familiar to scientists and zoological professionals, but a traditional legal doctrine, known as habeas corpus (meaning “you have the body”) may not have obvious applicability to nonhumans in the animal kingdom. In recent years, animal rights organizations have utilized the habeas corpus doctrine as a basis to bring legal challenges on behalf of nonhuman animals to expand “legal personhood” to them. These lawsuits, which have focused on species such as nonhuman primates and elephants, seek to challenge the “confinement” of animals in zoological institutions and by private owners, much like a prisoner or other detainee. The small but vocal animal legal personhood movement bases its argument on the fact that elephants and nonhuman primates are highly sentient and have complex cognitive characteristics. Proponents of legal personhood for animals have argued that the common law has progressed and expanded over the years as societal norms and conditions have changed and, much like the law has expanded to afford women and persons of color legal rights and protections, so should the law expand to treat animals the same as humans. Despite these efforts, to date, no court in the United States has accepted this invitation. This article summarizes key legal challenges and decisions to date in the United States, examines how science and societal conditions have influenced the law, and analyzes the reasons why legal personhood for animals so far has been viewed as a “bridge too far” in the American legal system.