Recently the Nonhuman Rights Project filed three suits in New York seeking to have chimpanzees recognized as legal persons, specifically for purposes of the writ of habeas corpus. All three suits have been dismissed, which the NhRP expected and will appeal.
It’s interesting that the cases were filed in New York state court because the most recent major case in this area (Cetacean Community v. Bush) was filed in the Hawaiian federal court and appealed to the 9th Circuit. The strategy here seems to be to focus on habeas corpus rights rather than rights under the Endangered Species Act and related laws. New York seems to have been chosen because of its automatic right of appeal in habeas cases and because its Pet Trust Act allows animals to be the beneficiary of a trust, which the NhRP argues is evidence that the law already treats animals as legal persons in at least one way.
Now, we aren’t here to discuss the ethical, political, or scientific merits of these cases. The real question is, “how does this affect Superman (and all the other intelligent non-humans in the comics)?”
As we discussed in our book, the law currently does not recognize any non-human animal as a legal person, and so far these cases affirm that. The NhRP provided copies of the oral hearing transcript in one case and the judge’s decision in another. From the latter we can see that the judge held (via handwritten note) that the habeas statute “applies to persons, therefore habeas corpus relief does not lie.” Not a lot to work with there.
We get a much more detailed discussion of the arguments from the hearing transcript. A major part of the NhRP’s argument focuses on chimpanzees’ cognitive sophistication and autonomy. This is kind of a fraught argument because it relies on some difficult line-drawing. Obviously not all chimpanzees are cognitively sophisticated: no doubt some have mental disabilities. So then the argument must be made on the basis that chimpanzees “in general” or “on average” are sufficiently cognitively sophisticated or autonomous and then somehow as a result the rest of the chimpanzees should likewise be treated as legal persons.
This is much the same way as it is with human. We (mostly) don’t deny human beings legal rights simply because of their lack of cognitive ability. Membership in the class of human beings is sufficient. History has demonstrated that whenever we try to draw lines things get really ugly, so we’ve mostly stopped doing so.
In this case the tricky bit is establishing that a) the chimpanzees involved in these lawsuits are cognitively sophisticated and autonomous enough and that b) all chimpanzees should be given the same legal status rather than creating some kind of cognitive test.
So what does this mean for Kryptonians, Skrulls, intelligent robots, and all the rest? So far it means a continuation of the status quo. Depending on how the cases turn out, it likely means that each species (and possibly even each individual) would have to have its legal personhood established on a case by case basis. Just as the NhRP’s cases only focus on chimpanzees and explicitly do not seek personhood for bonobos, gorillas, and other apes (much less dolphins, African Grey parrots, or other notably intelligent animals), if the Vision sued to be recognized as a legal person that wouldn’t necessarily mean anything for the Skrulls or even, say, Ultron.
We look forward to seeing how these cases play out, although it will likely be at least several months before there are further developments.