"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