Posted on 04/27/2014 4:13:57 PM PDT by don-o
How does a thing become a person? In December 2013, the lawyer Steven Wise showed the world how, with a little legal jujitsu, an animal can transition from a thing without rights to a person with legal protections. This Op-Doc video follows Mr. Wise on his path to filing the first-ever lawsuits in the United States demanding limited “personhood” rights for certain animals, on behalf of four captive chimpanzees in New York State. Continue reading the main story Related in Opinion
Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at ‘Nonhuman Personhood’ and Animal WelfareJULY 28, 2013
Mr. Wise (who is also the subject of The New York Times Magazine’s cover story this Sunday) has spent more than 30 years developing his strategy for attaining animal personhood rights. After he started his career as a criminal defense lawyer, he was inspired by Peter Singer’s book “Animal Liberation” to dedicate himself to justice for animals. He helped pioneer the study of animal rights law in the 1980s. In 2000, he became the first person to teach the subject at Harvard Law School, as a visiting lecturer. Mr. Wise began developing his animal personhood strategy after struggling with ineffective welfare laws and regulations that fail to keep animals out of abusive environments. Unlike welfare statutes, legal personhood would give some animals irrevocable protections that recognize their critical needs to live in the wild and to not be owned or abused. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage
Should a Chimp Be Able to Sue Its Owner?APRIL 23, 2014
The current focus of Mr. Wise’s legal campaign includes chimpanzees, elephants, whales and dolphins — animals whose unusually high level of intelligence has been recognized by scientific research.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I would tend to agree, but a more powerful argument is that animals cannot make moral choices.
To know good from evil is to have the nature of, as J. Budziszewiski said, is to have a knowledge of 'what we can't not know'. This is referenced in Romans 1:20 through the second chapter of Romans. As hard as man tries, it is impossible to not know it is wrong (morally) to kill one's offspring, or to have sexual relations with your neighbors wife, or to blaspheme God. Now, this may be suppressed, but it cannot be discarded. It is the nature of a person. This is Natural Law. We cannot not know it is wrong to gratuitously harm another person. We cannot not know it is wrong to take property which belong to another person. If you look carefully at the Decalogue you will see the parallels.
I agree with your statement that animals cannot make moral choices. This is not in their nature to do so.
Does Mr. Wise honestly expect an animal to go to court if its “rights” are ever violated?
he (the evil one) is not at all unhappy to see the animal creatures being elevated in status.
Moral choices derive from spirit resonance, which is not a part of the animal soul behavior mechanism, except in those to whom God breathed a living soul. ... I contend that ETs are technologically advanced, but do not have a spirit component.
What I do know is that moral standards are prescribed by a Moral Lawgiver, and if there is a Moral Lawgiver then persons have a moral obligation to that Lawgiver. One does not reason the law, but discovers the law. Without objective standards of meaning of morality then life becomes meaningless and choices become capricious. There is, under this scenario, no right an wrong and no absolutes of any sort. Everything becomes a matter of opinion. J. Budziszewski says there is no country in which virtue and gratitude is vice. Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations, at all times, and in all places.
Person-years or dog-years?
The Wendell Urth mysteries are few in number, but more entertaining than Asimov usually is; I think he wrote them under a pen name to avoid being associated with the detective genre, and maybe because he still had hopes of becoming successful again. :’)
By “we” I meant people who unnecessarily torture animals, and those who support their right to do so.
My rats took forever converting from a slide rule to a calculator.
Thanks for bringing Scripture into it. I think I was probably making the mistake of thinking in secular terms.
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