An American animal rights group has launched legal action seeking to grant chimpanzees “legal personhood”, in order to overhaul treatment of the animals in captivity.
“Our goal is, very simply, to breach the legal wall that separates all humans from all nonhuman animals,” the Nonhuman Rights Project said.
“Once this wall is breached, the first nonhuman animals on earth will gain legal “personhood” and finally get their day in court — a day they so clearly deserve.”
The first of three suits have been filed in a New York court on Wednesday on behalf of Tommy, a 26-year-old chimp who is being held in the state
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the “detention” of Tommy in a “small, dank, cement cage in a cavernous dark shed” is unlawful as the animal is a “legal person” with the “fundamental right to bodily liberty”.
It demands his immediate release to a primate sanctuary.
The group said New York state was chosen to launch the preceding because of its generally flexible view of requests for a writ of habeas corpus, a centuries-old right in English law used to challenge unlawful detention, by determining that a legal person cannot be the property of another.
A Conservative Edge 
Reblogged this on Brittius.com.
LikeLike