About The Project
What is the Nonhuman Rights Project?
The Nonhuman Rights Project is unlike any other organization in the world. Why? Because we’re the only group fighting for actual LEGAL rights for members of species other than our own. More…
Are You a Legal Person or a Legal Thing?
If you are a nonhuman animal, you are simply a thing — property that is owned by a legal person. In legal terms, “things” are invisible to civil judges. They possess no legal rights and no hope of having them. Not so long as they remain legal things. More …
Why We Work Through the Common Law
The Nonhuman Rights Project argues that some nonhuman animals should have the capacity to possess common law rights. What is the common law and why do we take that approach as opposed to using federal laws, which only provide for minimal protection of certain animals? More …
How Common Law Judges Decide Cases
Every case is infinitely similar and infinitely different from every other case. Once we have some idea what the common law is about, we need to understand that the common law is made by human judges, and that they decide cases according to the legal values they hold. More …
The Capacity to Have a Legal Right
The passage from thing to person constitutes a legal transubstantiation. As a “person”, you have been brought to legal life. The Nonhuman Rights Project seeks to persuade judges that a nonhuman animal has the capacity to possess common law rights: what does capacity mean? More …
What Is a Legal Right?
To understand which legal rights the Nonhuman Rights Project is demanding for nonhuman animals, we need to understand what legal rights are. And we need to remember that only a legal person has the capacity to have a legal right. That’s why legal personhood is the bull’s-eye for the Nonhuman Rights Project. More …
Why the Nonhuman Rights Project is Unique
The great case in 1772 of James Somerset vs. Charles Steuart abolished human slavery in England and sparked a legal conflagration that within decades would consume human slavery everywhere in the Western world. Similarly, the Nonhuman Rights Project is preparing to litigate the most far-reaching and important legal question that has ever been litigated concerning nonhuman animals. More …
Exploring the Legal Case
Since 2007, dozens of lawyers, political scientists, law students, sociologists, psychologists, natural scientists, and computer modelers from across the country have been preparing the first cases. At the core of the Nonhuman Rights Project is the Legal Working Group, whose members are explore numerous legal questions related to obtaining legal personhood throughout all 50 states. More …
