The Nonhuman Rights Project’s unique litigation, legislation, and education work to secure legal rights for nonhuman animals is concentrated in the US. However, we closely follow global efforts that work to secure legal rights for any nonhuman entity because (like our efforts) they challenge a human-centric view of the law. Each case the NhRP files cites diverse examples of these efforts. This helps demonstrate that the single legal right we seek for our clients (i.e., the right to liberty) is far from novel, strange, or extreme, which is how our opponents try to color our work. Moreover, these citations urge judges to think with more open-mindedness about the kind of relief to which our clients are legally entitled.
Some of these international developments were the result of lawsuits modeled on the NhRP’s litigation, like the Argentine cases of Sandra the orangutan and Cecilia the chimpanzee. Both Sandra and Cecilia were recognized as legal “persons” and released to sanctuaries. In Cecilia’s case, Judge María Alejandra Maurico wrote: “If we take care of her wellbeing, it is not Cecilia who will owe us; it is us who will have to thank her for giving us the opportunity to grow as a group and to feel a little more human.” Other cases involved the NhRP directly, like one at the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. There, the Court relied partially on a brief we jointly filed with The Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. The Court ultimately recognized some nonhuman animals as rights-holders under the country’s constitutional rights of nature framework.
Finally, some international courts have relied on the NhRP’s work of their own volition For example, in Pakistan, the then Chief Justice Athar Minallah of the Islamabad High Court ruled, “without any hesitation,” that all nonhuman animals held captive by the Islamabad Zoo possessed legal rights. The COVID-19 crisis, he wrote, presented “an opportunity for humans to introspect and relate to the pain and distress suffered by other living beings,” caused by “the arrogance” of humans. Chief Justice Minallah, now a judge on the Supreme Court of Pakistan, cited our cases on behalf of Happy (who he called “an inmate” at the Bronx Zoo) and other nonhuman animals in the US as persuasive authority for his historic decision.
The latest wave of international legal developments in the domain of nonhuman rights is two-fold: another Argentine court has recognized additional nonhuman animals as the subjects of rights, and New Zealand has recognized a mountain as the same.
Judges in Argentina have worked diligently in the vanguard when it comes to recognizing nonhuman animals as rights-holders, vindicating their access to justice. In 2022, I authored two blogs about Argentine courts recognizing a cougar and fifty-five dachshunds as legal rights-holders, respectively. In January of this year, a judge sitting in the Court of First Instance for Criminal, Misdemeanor, and Petty Offense Matters in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ruled that fourteen birds of the canary species “should be recognized as subject of rights.” Amazingly, Judge Dr. Rodolfo Adán Ariza Clerici made his ruling upon request by the Assistant Public Prosecutor, who sought a declaration that the canaries are sentient and should be rehomed to a sanctuary for injured birds.
The case of the fourteen canaries came about after a woman suffering from dementia neglected to care for the birds, resulting in one of her neighbors reporting the conditions of the birds to the Argentine authorities. Throughout the prosecution for violations of Argentina’s Misdemeanor Code, the state referred to the birds as “sentient” and argued the birds had legal rights and were protected by Argentinian statutory authority and the Constitution of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Admittedly, it’s not entirely clear why the prosecution insisted on a declaration recognizing the fourteen canaries as the subject of rights. It doesn’t appear they needed such a declaration to succeed in their prosecutorial efforts. However, Judge Clerici did add, “what may change if the canaries (as in this specific case) are subjects of rights or not is with regard to who should hold custody or stewardship of them.”
Judge Clerici was aware that “the recognition of sentient beings as subjects of rights is not expressly established in the local sphere,” meaning (as far as I can tell) local law. Still, Judge Clerici felt “that it is not unreasonable to state that animals are subjects of rights,” because of:
1) Buenos Aires anti-cruelty laws (this is similar to how Judge Wilson of the New York Court of Appeals argued in his dissenting opinion in Happy’s case that anti-cruelty laws confer “reciprocal” legal rights onto nonhuman animals)
2) the Constitution of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires guarantees a right to a healthy environment which includes all nonhuman animals and therefore the captive canaries
3) international treatises, including the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007, the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, and
4) “international norms.”
The international norms, specifically, include academic works upon which Judge Clerici found the authority for declaring the fourteen canaries to be sentient and legal rights-holders (note, we don’t ask the judges in our cases to make a finding of sentience in order to rule in our clients’ favor). He explained that the academic works are “promoting the European trend to release animals from the status of things and endow them with an intermediate position between human and things, as beings capable of feeling and of suffering.” The courageous judge concluded his opinion by holding, “it is important to reaffirm that the canaries that were rescued during the raid carried out May 16, 2023, have a legal status as a subject of rights.”
As the lead attorney for our elephant clients held captive by the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado; for our elephant clients held captive by the Honolulu Zoo in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; and for our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of H.B. 249 in Utah, I find Judge Clerici’s decision inspiring and practical. It shows that in recognizing nonhuman animals as the holders of legal rights, there is not “an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society,” as the New York Court of Appeals in Happy’s case suggested would occur. In fact, nothing even close to that kind of misleading speculation has occurred.
This isn’t the only example of a nonhuman entity being recognized as a legal rights-holder in the first few months of this year. On January 30, legislation in New Zealand granted a mountain sacred to the indigenous Māori people, “all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.” The mountain’s legal personality (i.e., its legal identity) is named ‘Te Kāhui Tupua,’ which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole,” encompassing the mountain and its surrounding areas. As of this writing, Te Kāhui Tupua’s legal status as a rights-holder has also not had “an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society.”.
Mount Taranaki, or Taranaki Maunga (its Māori name), is a volcano, the second highest mountain on New Zealand’s North Island, and the third nonhuman entity to be conferred the status of a rights-holder in New Zealand. The country has also recognized the rights of Te Urewera (a vast forest and former national park) in 2014 and the Whanganui River in 2017. In the case of Te Urewera, the Tūhoe tribe became the forests’ legal guardian, demonstrating the practicality of being able to enforce the legal rights of nonhumans, even ones as varied and encompassing as an entire national park. And in March, Indigenous leaders from across the Pacific signed a treaty that recognizes whales (considered sacred beings by many Indigenous groups) as legal persons.
We see these developments as part of a global transformation in the legal status of nonhuman entities. Taken as a whole, these legal developments show that it’s possible to actualize justice for nonhuman animals and other nonhuman entities. Here in the US, we’ll continue to work to transform the legal system so it acknowledges and embraces changing norms about how we should view and treat the nonhuman world––for its sake and ours, considering we humans are fundamentally connected to that world.