ALBANY, New YorkâCan an animal who possesses the essential qualities of personhood ever be considered, in the eyes of the law, a person?
As of now, the answer is no. But a panel of New York state judges yesterday considered that question, which was posed by a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project on behalf of a 26-year-old chimpanzee named Tommy.
I hadn’t heard about this case but it’s definitely rightly considered a ‘landmark’. This reminds me a lot of a lecture I attended last year titled: Dolphins as Persons. Even though the case wasn’t ‘successful’ necessarily, I would agree with Steven Wise in saying that they still ‘won’ considering how well they made their case and the publicity around it – it’ll only perpetuate thinking about these types of questions.