An Entertainment Abuses Article from All-Creatures.org

Letter #4 from the Front Lines of the Struggle for Nonhuman Rights

From Christopher Berry, Executive Director, Nonhuman Rights Project
July 2024

"I could take all these animal cases and it would be only a slight drop in the bucket of animal abuse. I would spend an entire career nibbling at the edges. The only way I could make a substantial impact was to focus on making systemic change."— Steven M. Wise, founder, the Nonhuman Rights Project. 

I first heard about Steve Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project when I was still in law school. A law school friend enthusiastically introduced me to the NhRP’s habeas corpus approach to animal rights while we were walking our dogs.

Word had spread among law students interested in animal law that a relatively new organization, then composed of Steve, a few key staff, and a host of enthusiastic legal volunteers, was putting together cases the world had never seen — modeled on struggles for fundamental human rights waged in centuries past, but with nonhuman animals as clients.

Habeas corpus is an important form of legal action that simply protects individuals from unjust confinement. It’s regularly used by incarcerated individuals challenging their imprisonment, but it’s also been used by prisoners of war, enslaved humans, and children. It’s a core function of the courts to determine when someone is entitled to relief under habeas corpus. This stewardship requires adapting the law to present circumstances to ensure that justice is done.

Before the NhRP, no one had ever demanded that judges apply it to nonhuman animals. As someone who was interested not just in the power of the law to create systemic change but also in how ideas that might at first appear radical can ultimately be accepted as the norm, I was impressed by how the NhRP was years away from filing its first lawsuit, yet it was already effectively communicating its perspective of the legal system and influencing the legal community.

By 2013, I had graduated law school and was working elsewhere as an animal lawyer on cases involving issues such as consumer fraud and administrative procedure.

That year, the NhRP filed its first habeas corpus petition on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee held in a cage in a shed on a used trailer lot off a highway in Gloversville, New York. The lawsuit generated widespread news coverage. This coverage was memorably favorable, including a New York Times article that appropriately treated the lawsuit as a serious legal strategy to remove Tommy from his cage and secure his release to a chimpanzee sanctuary.

....

Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

The NhRP’s first client Tommy peers out from his cage in Gloversville, New York. Credit: HBO/Pennebaker Hegedus Films as seen in the documentary Unlocking the Cage

---

Posted on All-Creatures.org: August 1, 2024
Return to Entertainment Abuses Articles
Read more at Litigation Articles