Chimpanzee "Personhood" Lawsuits Fail In New York Courts 370
sciencehabit writes "Three lawsuits filed last week that attempted to achieve 'legal personhood' for four chimpanzees living in New York have been struck down. The suits, brought by the animal rights group the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), targeted two chimps on private property and two in a research lab at Stony Brook University in New York. NhRP says it will now appeal each lawsuit to a higher court, and that it will continue its campaign to grant chimpanzees, dolphins, and other cognitively advanced animals legal personhood nationwide."
so how will they earn a living (Score:4, Insightful)
ok, so they free all the smart animals. what next?
send them back to the wild to fight for food and die fast?
Re:so how will they earn a living (Score:5, Funny)
whats next? collect taxes from them!
Re:so how will they earn a living (Score:5, Funny)
A good case could be made for electing them to Congress.
Re:so how will they earn a living (Score:5, Funny)
A good case could be made for electing them to Congress.
Screaming and throwing feces at each other? It would be an improvement.
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As the saying goes (Score:2)
a sufficient number of them might actually do something productive...
Re:so how will they earn a living (Score:5, Funny)
I assume the chimps will be immediately subject to prosecution for bestiality, paedophilia (they apparently start giving birth around 13-14 years), and failure to file tax returns.
Or if they're found to be incompetent to function in human society, they could become wards of the state, I suppose. Of course, then they'd need lots of prescription meds to control their behavior. Which, fortunately, have all been animal-tested.
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In that same vein, I'll consider granting personhood to other species when they themselves can communicate and stand up for rights those species believe they are entitled to. Like a chimp or dolphin Frederick Douglass [wikipedia.org].
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How do you know they're not communicating and standing up for things like that? Maybe you just don't understand their communication any better than a wild chimp understands your speech.
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The burden is on the creatures without a powerful military to justify their personhood to the creatures with a powerful military. Arguing the morality of it all is just navel-gazing.
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Why bestiality? They're supposed to be persons, not animals. So sex with chimps would not be bestiality. Just make sure you're not doing it with an underaged chimp.
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Ooh, good call!
Re:Chimps' sex lives (Score:5, Informative)
Chimps are not bonobos.
that's doctor lawyer chimp to you! (Score:2)
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And in the case of George W. Bush, aspire to the highest office in the world.
Re:Chimps' sex lives (Score:4, Insightful)
very true. in fact, there was a great nova special a few years ago (pbs tv) that contrasted the huge diff between bonobos and chimps. day and night diff. peace vs war.
I think I want to be a bonobo when I grow up ;)
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Yes, Bonobos are sort of the idealized noble hominoid. Chimps and humans, sadly, are the nastiest of the lot.
But bonobo are still chimps (Score:3)
No but the other way around is still true.
Even if all chimps are not bonobos (there are also troglodytes), all bonobos are chimps (as much as all troglodytes are also chimps).
So if all chimps (including bonobos, including troglodytes) had got personhood status,
then bonobo's sex life would still relevant to the joke,
even if troglodytes wouldn't be concerned by this joke.
Re:Chimps' sex lives (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the pedophilia would work. If chimps are deemed persons, then in the US, they would be required to abide by the laws of this country. In the US, the age of consent would still apply and since laws regarding pedophilia are age based, even if chimps are sexually mature, they would still be guilty of it. If you enact legislation permitting it for chimps, then you open up equal protection suits for human pedophiles as the two classes of person would be treated different under the law.
More likely what would happen if chimps were granted personhood would be that they are deemed incapable of caring for themselves in society and have to be institutionalized, just as they are now. I'm sure the group pushing for this would want them to be returned to the wild, however, as persons, here, but not there, they have no citizenship abroad for us to deport them. In addition, any of them born here, as persons, would be US citizens and could not be deported.
In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution. The appellate process will find the same thing.
Re:Chimps' sex lives (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution.
Why is it then that intelligent animals don't deserve personhood, but corporations do? A sentient intelligent creature is not a person, but a legal entity is? That's pretty inconsistent.
That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The answer is obvious: money and corruption.
Re:Chimps' sex lives (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "rhetorical" answer to your question only reveals that you do not understand the law.
First we must remember that the rubric "corporation", includes not only Microsoft and Wal-Mart, but also universities, hospitals, churches, municipalities, and clubs. The first corporation to assert constitutional rights in the US Supreme Court was not a business. It was Dartmouth College. ("It is a small college, but there are those that love it." - Daniel Webster).
Corporations are associations of natural persons (i.e. individual human beings), who themselves have full legal capacity and who themselves bear "rights". The associates include the directors and officers of the corporation.
Granting them corporate personhood allows them to own property and enter into contracts in their roles in the association. The Latin word for a role is "persona".
Doing this allows the property and contracts to inhere in the association so that if an individual dies or retires from his role, the property and contracts automatically transfer to the next individual who holds that role. If we did not do this, the property and contracts of the association would have to go through probate if one of the associates were to die, or be deeded for every resignation, or even worse, be subject to litigation.
The underlying social logic of this type of legal structure has been laid out by Nobel Prize winning economist Douglass North. In his view the open availability of institutional structures like the corporation is one of the hallmarks of advanced societies like the US. The lack of these structures defines base state societies like Afghanistan, Syria, and Sudan. See "Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History" by North, Wallis, & Weingast [amazon.com].
IAAL. As Chief Justice Coke explained to King James I, (see "Prohibitions del Roy") [libertyfund.org], issues concerning the life, liberty, and property of citizens, are not decided by the King's natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of Law, which is mastered only by long study and labor. But, the Law is the golden measure that protects everyone, governor and governed alike, in safety and peace.
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In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution.
Why is it then that intelligent animals don't deserve personhood, but corporations do? A sentient intelligent creature is not a person, but a legal entity is? That's pretty inconsistent.
That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The answer is obvious: money and corruption.
Corporations are juridic persons - deemed by law as opposed to natural persons. A juridic person has no rights except what the law grants them, which in the case of corporations was the exercise of free speech as related to political speech. The reason given was because the outcome of political endeavors impacts the corporation so the corporation should be free to present its support or opposition.
What was being proposed, on the other hand was not to declare chimpanzees as a type of juridic person but as a
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Chimps tend to mature faster than humans. So at that age, the chimp have completely undergone puberty and are more or less adult.
You really think the law regarding age of sexual consent has anything to do with biological maturity?!
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humans can have babies at 14 too.
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Sexual activity generally plays a major role in bonobo society, being used as what some scientists perceive as a greeting,
And to think that I only tipped the cute barrista this morning.
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Well, they don't always see eye to eye.
Different status (Score:2)
FWIW, most humans are done with puberty long before age 18, but that doesn't stop most prosecutors.
No, what stops most prosecutors is the fact that lots of jurisdiction put the limit at a lower age than 18 (for exemple in europe it varies between 14 and 16).
Now to go back at the subject of under-age sex, lots of jurisdiction tend to make a distinction between "underage sex" (sex with someone under the age of consent, not necessarily someone biologically under-developped) and "child molestation" (actual pre-pubescent children involved).
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I don't have any point to make with what I'm about to say (seriously). But your point strangely reminds me of the debate about sending former American slaves back to the countries from which they or their ancestors were first taken.
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Hardly.
I actually appreciate that clause. It conveys the idea that the commenter is not intending to troll, and is intentionally not including any opinion for or against what follows.
selling there votes (Score:2)
as when they are a person they have the right to vote.
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Re:so how will they earn a living (Score:4, Interesting)
Orangutans are smarter. A zoo keeper once described the differences between the great apes. If you give a screwdriver to a gorilla, it jumps back in fear and will then tentatively take the screwdriver and try to eat it. A chimp will take it and try to use it for everything except unscrewing things. An Orangutan will take it, act stupid and hide it and when no-one is looking, use it to disassemble the cage.
Actually they aren't that smart. One who had figured out how to open his cage using a piece of wire, some cardboard and brute strength was smart enough to hide his actions from the zoo keeper but didn't stop to think that the intern working by the door would tell on him.
Google orangutan zoo escapes for examples.
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It makes no sense as the chimps have been in captivity. There is no possible way to reintegrate them back into existing, indigenous, wild African chimp societies. Its like forcing a family to adopt someone, it won't work.
And what is their definition of freed from captivity? An animal is either wild or in captivity. So we do what, turn them loose into the streets? Maybe they can get a job at walmart as a greeter. A zoo is still captivity and chimps privately owned are still in captivity just like dogs and ho
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The idea behind this is that chimps are extremely close relatives of ours, with many of the differences being of degree and not a lack of capacity. P. troglodytes, in particular, are tool users with at least some linguistic ability (far less than humans admittedly), form societies of fairly surprising complexity and size, and show at least some degree of sentience in general. I know this is a shades of gray kind of argument, but being that these are sentient creatures, at some point you have to ask yourself
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Weren't they free before they were held captive by humans?
No, many of them were bred in captivity {tfa didn't mention the origin of these chimps} and do not necessarily have the skills needed to survive in the jungles of FLORIDA?!?!?
Anyway they would need to adapt since they have never foraged for food, been made to face weather, or fought off predators and would probably need to be looked after until they did adapt. Not completely uncomplicated but not unsurmountable either.
Roddy McDowell (Score:3)
Was not available for comment
A small consolation (Score:5, Funny)
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The Lawyers for NhRP are racists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Lawyers for NhRP are racists (Score:5, Interesting)
To bad you got modded down as a troll because actually you are more or less correct - they are comparing chimp captivity to slavery. From a summary about the case:
n each case, NhRP is petitioning judges with a writ of habeas corpus, which allows a person being held captive to have a say in court. In a famous 1772 case, an English judge allowed such a writ for a black slave named James Somerset, tacitly acknowledging that he was a person—not a piece of property—and subsequently freed him. The case helped spark the eventual abolition of slavery in England and the United States. Wise is hoping for something similar for the captive chimps.
The irony is that their proposed solution, if they win is to house the chimps in a preserve in Florida. The claim it would be like the Native American reservations. However, there people are free to come and go, but the chimps would not have that right, so effectively, they would still be captives. They would just have different masters/caretakers.
I guess for the NhRP different classes of persons are entitled to different rights. Then again, that is pretty much what slave owners thought, too.
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The point of the lawsuit is not as focused on current animals (all of whom are dependants), but more-so for future generations (free-living/wild chimpanzees). If granted personhood, they wouldn't be used in the first place, and animal sanctuaries would be needed less, and demand f
Re:The Lawyers for NhRP are racists (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly, which is why I posted a link to Heinlein's Jerry Was A Man [willmorgan.org] in the first slashdot story about this. Heinlein, like these lawyers, was a racist (although in his defense, everyone was in 1947).
intelligence (Score:2, Insightful)
Considering that chimps are as intelligent (at least) as two and three year olds, I think they should be given the same sort of rights. The right not to be tortured, and mistreated for one.
Oh but they are beasts and awful, and rape and stuff. Yeah, humans are horrible aren't they.
Humans aren't special. Get over yourselves.
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Considering that chimps are as intelligent (at least) as two and three year olds,.....
Really? Maybe some really stupid 3 year olds.
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Don't see any chimps or dolphins wringing their hands/flippers over who has what rights. That seems to be a pretty special human trait.
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Considering that chimps are as intelligent (at least) as two and three year olds, I think they should be given the same sort of rights. The right not to be tortured, and mistreated for one.
Oh but they are beasts and awful, and rape and stuff. Yeah, humans are horrible aren't they.
Humans aren't special. Get over yourselves.
Most humans become civilised. Some however revert;.
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but by definition if you are not human you are an animal.
Or possibly a bowl of petunias.
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You might want to learn a bit about chimpanzees.
They "have the ability to plan, use tools, and effectively modify our environment."
They go on murder parties to other chimp groups. They strip out all natural resources that they can access in an area (food). They can actually communicate, not just mimic.
Also, "by definition if you are not human you are an animal" you might want to go look up the biological definition of Homo sapiens. We're animals too.
And "humans are responsible for their actions. Humans th
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Tool manufacture. Not just picking up a stick, but breaking off a branch to the right length, stripping off the leaves, whittling down the right size. Yeah, apes do that too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals#Primates [wikipedia.org]
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So do crows [youtube.com].
Re:intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is on average humans have the ability to plan, use tools, and effectively modify our environment.
It's almost certain you can't separate chimps from humans this way. Chimps not only use tools, they *learn* to use certain things as tools and the knowledge spreads between chimpanzee groups through individuals -- in other words they have a rudimentary technological culture.
Chimpanzee groups engage in warfare to annex territory, and it's not just a case of encountering other groups and spontaneous fights breaking out. They *invade* the territory of other groups. Surely that shows rudimentary planning. Within a group there is politics. The dominant male is not necessarily the strongest; a clever male can defeat a strong one by forming alliances.
Psychological experiments support the notion that chimps have a consciousness of self. Chimps have been taught American Sign Language, and appear to use all the cognitive features of language. Objections have been raised that this is just operant conditioning, but the same objections would apply to human use of language.
A hundred years ago, the idea that chimps might be persons from the point of view of ethics would be ridiculous. They were just animals in the forest. But a century of research has seriously undermined nearly every substantive distinction between humans and chimps. At this point the verifiable differences between chimps and humans aren't ones of *kind*, but of *degree*. Chimps use tools, but simpler ones than humans do. Chimps can use human language, even learn it spontaneously, but their vocabulary is in the hundreds of words, not thousands for a fluent human speaker.
If there is a defensible *ethical* distinction between the status of chimps and the status of humans, that distinction ought to arise out of clear-cut differences between humans and apes. At present there are only two clear-cut distinctions between humans and chimps. The first is genetics; chimps are close, but past attempts to create human/chimp hybrid have failed. Second, humans *rely* upon our advanced behavioral capabilities to survive. Tools are useful to chimps, but *essential* for us. Yet it is hard for me to see how we get from "chimps can get along without tools" to "it is immoral to experiment on chimps." One doesn't follow from the other.
If the answer is "well, they just aren't *human*," that has implications which are nearly as counter-intuitive as the notion that chimps have some of the same rights as humans. Most people would assume that if we ever met an alien, non-human civilization made up of self-conscious individuals, that hunting those individuals for pleasure would be morally wrong, and perhaps legally impermissible because while not human, they are "natural persons" with at least some of the basic rights of humans. Furthermore, if genetic tribalism is the ethical basis of law, why not favor Europeans over Africans, or vice versa?
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What's happening there is not that the animal has learned the language and is using it properly, but that the animal has (just as I said) learned some words, sticks words together in creative ways, and human beings that are highly motivated to do so are often able to make the leap and attribute real meaning to their utterences. But they still havent the syntax, which means they are simply not capable of understanding or dealing with the concepts of morality.
Re:intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, deer can outsprint humans, to the point where the human loses track of the deer, but nothing outruns a human over long distances. There was an article in Runner's World back in the 70s about running down deer in the Pacific Northwest. It takes about 4 hours.
The Tarahumara Indians [wikipedia.org] of Mexico are famous for hunting deer precisely this way. Tarahumara have been known to run distances up to 200 miles without rest.
Humans aren't wimps; we're just specialized.
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Chimps plan, use tools and modify their environment.
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"The difference is on average humans have the ability to plan, use tools, and effectively modify our environment."
Chimps do all of those things. I don't understand why people need to define a special category for intelligence which basically boils down to "things humans do". We are obviously more intelligent than chimps. On the other hand, chimps are obviously more intelligent than mice. Personhood is a sliding scale, and should be treated as such.
The flaw in your thinking is that personhood is a sliding scale, it is not. Personhood, a human construct, is only applicable to human beings. Is an invalid less a person than an athlete? No, they are both equal persons, but they have different capabilities. Society may value those capabilities differently, but it doesn't change the personhood.
People trying to elevate lower species to persons rely on things like intelligence, or sentience and the like. If that is the case, then all of us, if we are asleep
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Would the benefits be worth it? And what would the "benefits" be - a new class of slaves?
More and more we should start considering whether we should do research on stuff based on the long term consequences than merely it can now be done, or "someone else will do it if I don't" (that someone may only do it much later).
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All human beings are persons. All persons are human beings. There is no gray area or sliding scale. It is as simple as that.
The law doesn't agree. See "corporate personhood". If a corporation can be recognized as a legal person in the eyes of the law, why not an intelligent animal? Chimps are good candidates, so are dolphins or elephants. Guess which animal is next on the list of intelligence: pigs. Imagine what would happen if pigs had civil rights all of a sudden, where killing a pig would bring a murder charge. A lot of money would be thrown at politicians to make sure that would never happen. Regardless of how intelli
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A third is that we are humans and granted the rights to ourselves.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their C
This isn't about animal rights (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about people trying to force their extreme beliefs on others. If they were seriously interested in the humane treatment of animals, they would be pushing for tighter restrictions on mistreatment and better living conditions of corporate farm animals. At least put the court tax dollars to some better use than trying to push your "religion" on people.
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At least put the court tax dollars to some better use than trying to push your "religion" on people.
Religious would be to see the chimps as different from us (the current status quo).
But in fact, that pile of atoms you're made of has no clear boundary. It's not like you, the pile of atoms, is a separate entity from the pile of atoms that makes up the chimp. So in fact, you and the chimp are one entity. You *are* the chimp. Don't you think it's time somebody stood up for your rights?
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That's the same argument that claims graphite is the same as diamond, and is just as wrong.
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Human soceity not ready for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Take any law that governs the interaction between two humans and apply that to a human verses say a dolphin and you immediately run into serious and unworkable situations. Imagine having to grant a dolphin the right to confront their accuser in a court of law. Really? What about applying laws concerning manslaughter or murder or accidental death? What about representation in government?
Yes, I know the New York case was not about all of these things, but once the door is open you can never close it. Just look at the legal ruling that corporations are legal persons to understand what I mean.
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They are asking to grant "person" status. Not Human status.
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I like how you're saying that homo sapiens isn't ready for lower primates. That's pretty clever, I like how you did that.
You don't think it has something to do with more fundamental problems, do you? Like how we're the only living thing with a voice box capable of producing speech? That, might not be a big issue in your model of the Amazing Human World of the Future?
And put cognitively disadvanced ones in captivity? (Score:2)
Like these morons.
From cages to prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
The want chimpanzees released from "illegal detention," but if we treated them like people, they would end up in prison very quickly. I would give them two days before they were guilty of trespass, theft, assault, and battery. They would be ruled incompetent to stand trial, and probably placed in a psychiatric prison in solitary confinement. That is what we do with people who act like chimpanzees.
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Re:From cages to prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
I would give them two days before they were guilty of trespass, theft, assault, and battery.
Heck, they'd probably be done in for indecent exposure in a matter of hours.
This is animal rights groups being really stupid. Smart animal rights groups focus on things like protecting endangered wild animals, putting a stop to puppy mills, rescuing pets, and ensuring humane treatment of captive animals, because those are what most people are comfortable supporting.
or deportation? (Score:2)
Maybe we can just deport the chimps back to where they came from....?
Legal Fiction (Score:2, Informative)
From my understanding, the lawyers were hoping to create a legal fiction such that habeas corpus would be applicable to the chimpanzees, similar to the way that personhood is granted to corporations for many different purposes. A corporation needs to be a "person" so it can be sued. But corporate personhood does not grant corporations every right that people have. The same thing is happening here. No one wants to give chimpanzees the right to vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_fiction#Corporate_personh
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No, of course not!
We just wanna sue the monkeys!
We're not crazy or anything!
Waste Of Taxpayer Dollars (Score:2)
hierarchy of rights (Score:2)
I'm trying to keep up, but I think this is the hierarchy of rights that I have seen in the US.
It's hard to settle on the exact order. Each item could up or down one level.
1 People in my country.
2 Corporations
3 People in other countries
4 People in other countries who look like they have nothing
5 Cute animals
6 Monkeys that aren't so cute
7 non-cute things that can't harm me
8 scary things
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1
5
3
6
4
7
8
Re:hierarchy of rights (Score:5, Informative)
1 US Corporations
2 Foreign Corporations
3 People in my country
4 People in other countries
5 People in other countries who look like they have nothing
6 Cute animals
7 Monkeys that aren't so cute
8 People in countries the US government doesn't like
9 non-cute things that can't harm me
10 scary things
FTFY
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1 Rich People in my country.
2 Corporations (based anywhere)
3 Rich People in other countries
4 People in my country who pay taxes
5 Cute animals
6 Monkeys that aren't so cute
7 non-cute things that can't harm me
8 scary things
9 Poor people in my country
10 Poor people in other countries
11 Poor people in other countries who want to be free.
Incorporation (Score:2)
That monkey needs to incorporate!
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Frontier Psychiatry (Score:2)
That boy needs therapy. Psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy. Purely psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy. Lie down on the couch! What does that mean? You're a nut! You're crazy in the coconut!
What does that mean? That boy needs therapy.
I'm gonna kill you.
on the internet no one cares I am a Chimp (Score:2)
On the subject of personhood... (Score:2)
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The main reason as I understand it is that if corporations weren't people then they would have no legal status. For example, you could not sue them. They could not form contracts and be held accountable for these contracts.
This legal doctrine goes back to a Supreme Court in the first 30 years of the Republic. Since at least Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward â" 17 U.S. 518 (1819), the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to e
There is a better use of resources. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about these nitwits find some better ways to improve the human condition before they go off to tilt at windmills. I am all for the prevention of cruelty to animals, but this has just gone over the top into nutcake land. I don't want anything to do with PETA anymore because of the looney positions they started taking in the past few years.
The whole lot of them, just look silly and make it a lot harder for reasonable actions to be taken.
Off to the higher courts (Score:2)
Another thing I'd like to point out is that marijuana is illegal because they used chimps to demonstrate that if you suffocate a monkey with smoke, it kills them.
An infinite number of chimps (Score:2)
with an infinite amount of type and infinite amount of personhood will eventually form their own corporation.
Thought experiment (Score:2)
Suppose you are an alien judge in a galaxy-spanning, multi-species civilization -- something like the Federation in Star Trek, but humans haven't joined yet. Furthermore it's permissable for members, some of whom are carnivores, to kill animals, but not other natural persons.
A case is brought to you in which a research team has captured a human hunter who has just killed chimpanzee. They bring the hunter back for trial on the charges of murdering of a natural person.
What are your instructions to the prose
Re:ook? (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid mon-
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Some corporations are people, they are called Corporation Sole, in those jurisdictions that allow for it. Most US Corporations are not people. However, they are persons under the law.
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This isn't about giving power to animals. It's about giving power to guardians of animals. Just like organized religion is about giving power not to God, but to priests.
Interesting, since not all religions have priests, nor do they all have a deity. Might your anti-catholic bias be showing?
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Can you really be considered anything but innocent if you(r society) lack(s) a sense of ethics/morality?