"Corporations have been treated as legal persons in a
different context. Citizens United, for example is one
case. Can you give any example anywhere, where in a habeas
corpus
context, where "person" has been
attributed to a non-human being?"
"A person is not synonymous with a human being. A person
means it's someone that the civil law now says (count)...
they are no longer invisible to the civil law. So we cited
other common laws in other countries. An Indian court
finds that the holy books of the Sikh religion are persons
and in 2012, there was a treaty between the indigenous
peoples of New Zealand and the Crown that designated a
river as a legal person... a legal person is a legal
concept, it is not a biological concept..." - Unlocking
the Cage
Science
has shown us over the last 50 years, especially over the last
20, that there are more autonomous beings in this world than
just human beings. - Steven
Wise, Unlocking
the Cage
... the law
evolves according to scientific discoveries, social
mores...witness marital rights... Isn’t it incumbent upon the
judiciary to at least consider whether a class of beings may be
granted a right or something short of a right, under the habeas
statute?” - Unlocking the Cage
...you can talk about 99% of DNA and other aspects that create
similarities - but the reality is that these (chimpanzees)
are fundamentally different species... I worry about the
diminishment of these rights in some way if we expand them
beyond human beings. I also think courts are just simply not
going to be equipped to determine where this new line is going
to be for these vague categories. - Unlocking
the Cage
I
know some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural
resource a legal personality, but it's no stranger than family
trusts, or companies, or incorporated societies. - New
Zealand Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson