“How should we relate to beings who look into mirrors and see themselves as individuals, who mourn companions and may die of grief, who have a consciousness of self? Don’t they deserve to be treated with the same sort of consideration we accord to other highly sensitive beings: ourselves?”—Jane Goodall

Interviewed by Jack Carone, Contributing Writer, The Animals Voice

Steven M. Wise began his mission to gain legal rights for nonhuman animals in 1985. He holds a J.D. from Boston University Law School and a B.S. in chemistry from the College of William and Mary. He has practiced animal protection law for four decades and is admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. Professor Wise taught the first class in “Animal Rights Law” at the Harvard Law School and has taught “Animal Rights Jurisprudence” at the Stanford Law School, as well as the Vermont, University of Miami, St. Thomas, and John Marshall Law Schools, and is currently teaching “Animal Rights Jurisprudence” at the Lewis and Clark Law School and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona School of Law.

Steven is the author of four books: Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals; Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights; Though the Heavens May Fall—The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery; and An American Trilogy—Death, Slavery, and Dominion Along the Banks of the Cape Fear River. His TED TALK from the TED2015 Conference in Vancouver, Canada, was released in May of 2015, and has over one million views. His work is the focus of the 2016 HBO/Pennebaker and Hegedus film, Unlocking the Cage.

We speak a lot about Animal Rights, and many of us have identified as animal rights activists. As applied to the type of work that most animal advocacy organiza­tions are doing, is animals rights an accurate term? If not, what’s the distinction?
Birgitta Wahlberg and I have concluded that there is an overarching discipline that should be called “animal law” or “animal jurisprudence” and that there exist three distinct branches to that, each with a different focus and purpose, though statutes may address more than one branch at the same time.

The first branch concerns the traditional focus on duties that may be imposed upon human beings with respect to how they should treat nonhuman animals in their capacity as rightless “things” or “objects of protection” and more recently, “sentient beings,” that lack the capacity for legal rights. This we propose to be called “animal welfare” or “animal protection.” This is the work of virtually every group that incorrectly calls itself an “animal rights” group. While generally ineffective when standing alone, as the history and law concerning humans demonstrates, animal welfare or animal protection becomes exceedingly important when combined with rights. The struggle for animal rights (as defined below) is going to take a while to win. In the meantime, animal welfare or animal protection is all non­human animals have that carries the potential to protect any of their interests, and so these should be vigorously pursued.

The second branch concerns the rising focus on desig­na­ting nonhuman animals as legal “persons” with the capacity for one or more legal rights. This branch we propose to be called “animal rights.” This is the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), that calls itself a “civil rights organ­ization that focuses on obtaining legal rights for nonhuman animals.”

Even the most fundamental interests of human have never been protected until they gain fundamental legal rights. Thus Article VI of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article XVI of the International Coven­ant on Civil and Political Fights provide that “everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” The same is true for at least some nonhuman animals.

The third branch regulates human actions that have an indirect impact upon the lives of nonhuman animals without imposing either indirect and enforceable duties upon humans to treat them in a certain way or granting rights to them. Ex­amples include the purchase and sale of nonhuman animals or the relationship between tenants who own nonhuman animals and their landlords. This branch we propose to call “animal regulation.”

“The struggle for animal rights (as defined below) is going to take a while to win. In the meantime, animal welfare or animal protection is all non­human animals have that carries the potential to protect any of their ­interests, and so these should be vigorously pursued.”

Are all rights legal? What about birthrights?
Legal rights have to do with what is legal. Moral rights have to do with what is moral. A birthright can be legal or moral or both.

If animal rights are only defined by the legal system, yours is the only organization in the U.S. that seems to be working to achieve that, and every other animal organ­ization is actually a protection or welfare group (even though those in the groups believe personally that ani­mals have rights). Do other organizations claiming to be animal rights hurt your efforts by diluting the very definition of animal rights?
We wish that organizations doing the important work of animal protection or animal welfare characterize themselves as doing animal welfare or animal protection work. Other­wise, the general public, legislators, judges, and media will continue to believe that animal protection or animal welfare is what animal rights is about. But not only will they not understand that the NhRP is doing something very different, but they will not know to focus on what needs to be done to make nonhuman animals legal persons with fundamental legal rights.

Have you ever been in an animal rights demonstration, and do you think they help or hurt your goal?
I have been to dozens of animal welfare demonstrations and find them generally very helpful for bringing the prob­lems that we are all grappling with into the public eye, for reminding those who exploit nonhuman animals that their unfettered ability to do so is rapidly drawing to a close, and for catalyzing action that may stop the exploitation being demonstrated against.

Was there one event or moment when you decided that the law was the route to animal personhood rather than a transformative global change of ethics? An aha! moment when you decided to commit your life to this path?
After working as an animal welfare or animal pro­tection lawyer for five years and not succeeding at anything of great moment, I realized that I never would succeed at anything of great moment so long as nonhuman animals remained legal “things” who lack the capacity for legal rights. And so I de­cided that I would do everything I could to make as many nonhuman animals legal “persons” with the capacity for fundamental legal rights as I could.

Has there been anyone in the past whose work inspired you? Are you the first to pursue this tactic?
Darwin taught me to be persistent, systematic, and care­ful in drawing factual conclusions, and determined to follow the evidence. Lincoln (whose name I gave to my son as a middle name) taught me to be practical, independent, deter­mined, well-read, humane, and tolerant. St. Paul taught me to do what I think is right even if I am the only one who thinks I am right. Granville Sharp, William Lloyd Garrison, and Emmeline Pankhurst taught me to aim at fundamental injustice and never ease up. I wrote a book, Though the Heavens May Fall, that told the story how human slavery was abolished in the U.K. through litigation in the Court of King’s Bench before Lord Mansfield. The work of the Nonhuman Rights Project is modeled on that litigation.

You have written that you relate to Winston Churchill’s statement regarding the British triumph over the Nazis at El Alamein— “It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” How does this apply to your campaign?
For us at the Nonhuman Rights Project “the end of the beginning” is us helping judges to imagine that at least some nonhuman animals need not continue to be the legal “things” they have always been, but instead be the legal “persons” they are becoming, then to persuade those judges to establish their legal personhood.

How do you pick your cases? Is it purely based on choosing an individual of a species who is more similar to humans, or are there other factors?
The NhRP studies the fundamental values and principles, which typically include liberty, autonomy, equality, and fair­ness, along with rational and nonarbitrary decision-making, that the courts of a target jurisdiction claim constitute justice. We then locate a nonhuman animal of a species who has been studied intensively for decades and for which the scien­tific evidence for her autonomy is rich, gather every relevant scientific fact from the most-respected experts in their fields, and fashion our legal arguments in favor of the personhood of our nonhuman animal clients in terms of those funda­men­tal values and principles supported by those facts.

“Our most significant moment in court was the first one. I had been preparing for that day for 28 years.”

Do you rely on one principal argument for including other-than-humans as legal persons?
To date, we have only filed common law habeas corpus cases. These cases involve numerous legal arguments based on such fundamental principles of justice, as liberty equal­ity, autonomy, and rational decision-making that the courts claim to believe in. We have been developing other causes of actions as well that derive from other fundamental principles of justice.

What has been your most significant moment in court?
Our most significant moment in court was the first one. I had been preparing for that day for 28 years. Other mem­bers of our team had been working on it for seven years.

The record of that oral argument reveals that once I began to argue that decades-long dam broke and I wouldn’t stop talking until the judge finally ordered me to sit down and be quiet. Once I did, he let begin again.

What is your most disappointing moment to date, and how do you overcome discouragement?
We are disappointed any time we receive a decision that appears to be the result of implicit or explicit bias or is arbitrary, along the lines of “only humans can have rights,” without any explanation as to why in heaven that should be so. But we understand that American courts have not infre­quently passed through periods in which they initially under­mined their own fundamental values and principles rather than acknowledge their application to entities they had long excluded from justice. Black and Chinese people were once denied rights because they were not white. Women were once denied rights because they were not men. Gays were denied rights because they were not straight. An initial task of the NhRP is therefore to encourage judges, for the first time, then persistently, to begin to think about the injustice of the legal thinghood of all nonhuman animals and how any refusal to recognize the justice of their personhood under­mines the courts’ own basic value and principles. We cannot win before judges who think we cannot win. For those who have never thought it possible, their required psychological shift must begin with being able to imagine that an entity, such as a nonhuman animals, who has long been considered a legal “thing” can possibly be seen as legal “persons.” Only then will they be seen as “persons.”

What is your most encouraging victory so far, even if a partial victory?
In 2015, at the demand of the Nonhuman Rights Project, a trial court in New York City issued the world’s first habeas corpus order that required Stony Brook University to come into court and give a legally sufficient reason why they could legally imprison two chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo. We saw we could do it, as we always knew we could.

How does the average person react to the idea that ani­mals have actual rights?
Ironically, some of the general public believes that non­human animals already have rights. This rather diminishes the idea of the power of legal rights as nonhuman animals are so clearly naked to the nearly-unbridled power of human beings over them. This usually is a product of a confusion of animal regulation, that is statutes or regulations that regulate the human exploitation of nonhuman animals, with animal rights. Some erroneously believe that being the subject of something like an anti-cruelty statute means that nonhuman animals have a right not to be treated cruelly. But we gener­ally find that the average person believes that at least some nonhuman animals, such as apes, elephants, and cetaceans, ought to have fundamental legal rights.

How have you been treated in the press?
Generally the press treats us seriously, fairly, and re­spectfully, especially those members of the press who have actu­ally read what we file in court and that don’t have an eco­nomic interest in our failure. We track our press mentions and know, for example, that in the middle six months of 2017, 2,095 articles were published about our work in the world press, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Times of India, The Japan Times, the Kremlin Express, Le Monde, The Independent, and numerous others. We also know that more than one hundred law review articles and books discuss our work.

What is your response to those who think this mission is trivial or ludicrous?
If the people are serious and want to discuss or debate the point, we are ready, for we are certain they don’t under­stand what we are doing and why and probably have not even read what we file. Just last month, a columnist for the Connecticut Law Tribune, who is a former President of the Connecticut Bar Association, wrote that when the NhRP filed a recent habeas corpus case on behalf of three ele­phants being imprisoned by a zoo, “I viewed the whole thing as a farce and a waste of time. I was wrong … After a lot of reading and thinking … I think the case has a point.” We think that open-minded people who read and begin to think about what we are doing, and why, will reach a similar con­clusion. On the other hand, if our critics are not serious, or are seriously ignorant, we ignore them.

Have non-humans acquired any degree of personhood anywhere else in the world?
Personhood is the capacity for one or more of the infinite number of possible rights. Some of the states in the United States have enacted so-called “Pet Trust” statutes that allow a human being to set up a trust for the benefit of a nonhuman animal, who is designated to be a true beneficiary. Since only “persons” may be trust beneficiaries, we believe that nonhuman animals are already “persons” in those states. Outside the United States, a judge in Argentina ruled in 2016 that a chimpanzee is a “non-human person” and issued a writ of habeas corpus that ordered her removed from a zoo and sent to a sanctuary in Brazil. A speckled bear in Columbia was denied a writ of habeas corpus. That decision was reversed, then a third court reversed the second decision.

A third appeal is pending. Along similar lines, within the last two years, New Zealand has declared both a river and a national park to be a “person.” The Indian Supreme Court declared the holy books of the Sikh religion to be a “person” in 2000, while lower courts have found a Hindu idol and a mosque to be “persons.”

At this point in your mission, are you optimistic, pessimistic, or agnostic as to the future? Do you think we will see any type of other-than-human animal recognized in the U.S. as a person with legal rights anytime soon?
I am wildly optimistic. Our facts are strong and com­prehensive. Our legal arguments are powerful and in har­mony with the fundamental values and principles that the judges before whom we appear claim constitutes justice. The rights of nonhuman animals have the same foundations as do the fundamental rights of humans. We will inevitably even­tually prevail, not just in the United States, but throughout the world.

Once we reach “the end of the beginning” with at least some nonhuman animals, the road to fundamental legal rights for at least those nonhuman animals will open and the struggle will shift from the “end of the beginning” to the “beginning of the end” of the automatic legal thinghood of every non­human animal and on to the fleshing out of the spec­ific rights to which justice entitles them.

I find that most animal activists, even those working to reduce the population of companion animals, are in crisis mode and can’t describe what the world looks like when they achieve their goal. For instance, how many dogs and cats should there be, and where do they come from in a sterilized pet world; are there special breeders; do they only breed “purebreds”; will the future have no dog mixes? etc. Regarding your goals, will mak­ing non-humans persons totally disrupt animal agricul­ture, and as a result our econ­omy, and even make us re-examine pet guar­dianship? Do you ponder any other profound effects from suc­cess in your mission?
Trying to answer the question is like trying to answer the question of how will artificial intelligence and robots disrupt and change what we do today? But remember that, when human slavery and the slave trade were under attack two centuries ago, the citizens of Liverpool, in whose ships half of Europe’s human slaves were transported, sang a ditty that bemoaned that, if the slave trade ended, Liverpool would disappear, while the future president of the College of ­Wil­liam and Mary predicted that Virginia would be come a “waste howling wilderness,” which is why neither Liverpool nor Virginia exist today.

The struggle for the rights of humans has been waged for centuries. It will never stop. And we are just one species. There are a million species of nonhuman animals. The strug­gle over which species will be granted personhood and to what rights each such species should be entitled will never be over, who will be enslaved, exploited, and killed, and who will not, either, because it will depend, in part, upon our understanding about the cognitive abilities of a species, and sometimes their ecological place. Certain fundamental rights will turn on what science tells us. And that will always be in flux.

They will also depend upon changing views of morality, public policy, and economics. I can say that if a non­human animal has the funda­mental legal right to bodily liberty or bodily integrity, or some other civil right, that right had better be respected.

How do you cope with knowing the animals are stuck in their situations until your work can free them?
I spend a great deal of time read­ing history, including the history of human slavery and abolition, and wrote a book of history myself, Though the Heavens May Fall, which tells the story of how the 1772 case of Somerset v. Stewart ended human slavery in England. I know how Granville Sharp, William Wil­ber­force, Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, Benjamin Lay, Anthony Benezet, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Gar­rison, Harriet Tub­man, and numerous others suffered terribly through their knowl­edge of, and empathy with, humans who were enslaved. Many, like Equiano, Tub­man, Truth, and Douglass, threw off the shackles of their own slavery. What they did was ceaselessly fight and care not at all for what their critics said. I have fought for decades and don’t read or listen to what others say about me and my work and the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project. We have a plan. It’s a good one. It will work, and is working.

What message do you have for people who care about animals? How can we help?
All human history demonstrates that no individual’s fundamental interests have been protected except through fundamental legal rights.

The same goes for nonhuman ani­mals. There is but one way to protect their fundamental interests and that is through fundamental legal rights.

Please make history with the Nonhuman Rights Project and strug­gle with us towards achieving that goal.