Actual Chimpanzees Don't Have Legal Rights: Seems Like An Important Distinction Just At The Moment

(Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

A noble yet misguided effort seems to have come to an end. A New York appellate court ruled that chimpanzees Kiko and Tommy do not have legal rights commensurate with humans. The Nonhuman Rights Project has been arguing a habeas corpus petition for Kiko and Tommy for over three years. While the court was sympathetic to the plight of the chimpanzees, granting them human legal protections — when the legislature has not — was a bridge too far.

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That’s probably fair.

Writing for a unanimous court, Judge Troy Webber got it right:

Writing for the court, Justice Troy Webber agreed that chimps and humans share many behavioral, cognitive and social abilities.

But those shared abilities “do not translate to a chimpanzee’s capacity or ability, like humans, to bear legal duties,” Webber wrote.

In other words, a chimp can’t be prosecuted for a crime or considered legally able to defend itself in court — which is why, Webber wrote, “even chimpanzees who have caused death or serious injury to human beings have not been prosecuted.”

That’s a good standard, you can’t have human legal rights if you can’t bear human legal responsibilities.

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A chimpanzee, for all of its qualities, cannot for instance understand what obstruction of justice is or how to commit it. It cannot be expected to wait for informed consent before groping the private areas of other beings. When angered, its main strategy is to throw feces at its adversaries. Chimpanzee behavior would be illegal and unacceptable in human society, and yet the chimp could not be held legally responsible for acting like a chimpanzee.

It would be wrong to grant chimpanzees the privileges of humanity, without holding them accountable to other humans. In such a world, a chimpanzee could be President of the Unites States, and yet be legally immune from any consequences of its actions.

I wouldn’t want to live in such a world.

Chimps Kiko and Tommy Don’t Have Rights of People, New York Court Rules [NBC News]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.