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Courts Should Punish Animal "Person" Litigators

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The Nonhuman Rights Project lost a unanimous opinion in a ruling by the Appellate Division of New York’s State Supreme Court deciding — properly — that chimpanzees are not persons. From the New York Times story:

In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a "legal person" and thus sue for his freedom.

Oh, good grief, reporter Jesse McKinley: That is not a "blow for animal lovers!" One can love and deeply care for animals and not think they deserve treatment akin to humans.

It is a blow to ideologues who think animals and people are moral equals.

It is a blow to those who seek to destroy human exceptionalism.

Back to the story:

"Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions," wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. "In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights" such as habeas corpus.

Bingo!

These animal rights activists need to pay a stiff price for filing these radical claims. The courts have the power to sanction frivolous lawsuits through financial sanctions. The time has come to impose those penalties now.

Otherwise, they will just keep suing, hoping to find that one judge who wants to make history.

Image: State of New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.

Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

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