Legal Personhood and Ethical Considerations of Non-Human Animal-People, Part 1 of 2

Since 2009, numerous countries have begun to prohibit the use of certain or all animal-people in circuses. In 2010, Catalonia’s regional government enacted the first ban on bullfighting in Spain. One year later, as an initiative to bring to end the captivity and slavery endured by five orcas performing at SeaWorld in San Diego and Orlando, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) launched legal action. This marked the first instance where the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, was cited in court to advocate for nonhuman rights.

For the past four decades, NhRP is dedicated to realizing the vision of granting non-human rights on par with human rights, challenging the legal status quo that currently regards animal-people as legal “things” with no rights. “The Non-human Rights Project is an organization. It’s a civil rights organization that focuses on obtaining legal rights for some non-human animals. So, we don’t call ourselves an animal rights organization and protection organizations, we call ourselves a civil rights organization, and the lawyers within it are civil rights lawyers. So, what we had to do during that time was to begin getting an aura of respectability for the whole idea that a non-human animal could have a legal right. We had to begin teaching this in law schools; we had to begin writing articles, eventually writing books, forming organizations and then of course, coming up with the legal theories that had a reasonable chance of being able to win.”