Steven M. Wise

Steven M. Wise (born 1952) is an American legal scholar who specializes in animal protection issues, primatology, and animal intelligence. He teaches animal rights law at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, John Marshall Law School, Lewis & Clark Law School, and Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. He is a former president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and founder and president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights.^[1] The Yale Law Journal has called him "one of the pistons of the animal rights movement."^[2]

Wise is the author of An American Trilogy (2009), in which he tells the story of how a piece of land in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was first the home of Native Americans until they were driven into near-extinction, then a slave plantation, and finally the site of factory hog farms and the world's largest slaughterhouse. Though the Heavens May Fall (2005), recounts the 1772 trial in England of James Somersett, a black man rescued from a ship heading for the West Indies slave markets, which gave impetus to the movement to abolish slavery in Britain and the United States (see Somersett's Case). Drawing the Line (2002), which describes the relative intelligence of animals and human beings. And Rattling the Cage (2000), in which he argues that certain basic legal rights should be extended to chimpanzees and bonobos.^[1]

Background[]

Wise was awarded his J.D from Boston University in 1976, and became a personal injury lawyer. He was inspired to move into the area of animal rights after reading Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975),^[3] often referred to as the bible of the animal liberation movement. A practicing animal protection attorney, he is president of the nonprofit Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, Inc., where he directs its Nonhuman Rights Project, the purpose of which is to obtain basic common law rights for at least some nonhuman animals. He lives in Coral Springs, Florida.

Animal personhood[]

Wise's position on animal rights is that some animals, particularly primates, meet the criteria of legal personhood, and should therefore be awarded certain rights and protections. His criteria for personhood are that the animal must be able to desire things, to act in an intentional manner to acquire those things, and must have a sense of self i.e. the animals must know that s/he exists. Wise argues that chimpanzees, bonobos, elephants, parrots, dolphins, orangutans, and gorillas meet these criteria.^[3]

Wise argues that these animals should have legal personhood bestowed upon them to protect them from "serious infringements upon their bodily integrity and bodily liberty." Without personhood in law, he writes, one is "invisible to civil law" and "might as well be dead."^[4]

He writes in "The Problem with Being a Thing" in Rattling the Cage:

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In Rattling the Cage, Wise offers examples of primates who he believes have suffered unjustifiably. He writes about Jerom, a chimpanzee who lived alone in a small cage in the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, with no access to sunlight, after being infected with one strain of HIV when he was three, another at the age of four, and a third at the age of five, before dying in 1996 at the age of 14.

Wise also tells the story of Lucy Temerlin, a six-year-old chimpanzee who learned American Sign Language from Roger Fouts, the primatologist, and was raised by Maurice K. Temerlin and Temerlin Mcclain. Fouts would arrive at Lucy's home at 8:30 every morning, when Lucy would greet him with a hug, go to the stove, take the kettle, fill it with water from the sink, find two cups and tea bags from the cupboard, and brew and serve the tea. When she was 12, the Temerlins were no longer able to care for her. She was sent to a chimpanzee rehabilitation center in Senegal, then flown to Gambia, where she was shot and skinned by a poacher, and her feet and hands hacked off for sale as trophies.^[4]

Seminars[]

Wise has been profiled in Who's Who in the World (since 2005), Who's Who in America (since 2003), Who's Who in American Law (since 2005), and Who’s Who in Finance and Business (since 2007). He is a frequent guest on a wide variety of television and radio shows throughout Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and North America, including National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," Morning Edition," "Weekend Edition," "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," and "The Connection," NBC Nightly News, CBS Nightly News, Fox TV News, Court TV, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN News and "Crossfire," "Voice of America," and the BBC's "Start the Week' with Jeremy Paxman" and "Outlook." He speaks frequently on topics related to animal rights law at law schools, legal conferences, and universities throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Africa, including Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, University of Vienna Law School, Austria, University of Basel, Switzerland, Lincoln's Inn, London, University of New South Wales Law School, Australia, University of Woolongong Law School, Australia, University of Melbourne Law School, Australia, Monash University Law School, Australia, University of Auckland Law School, New Zealand, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Federal University, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, and the Office for Animal Rights, Florence, Italy.

He has taught "Animal Rights Law" or "Animal Rights Jurisprudence" at the Harvard, Vermont, Lewis and Clark, University of Miami, St. Thomas, and John Marshall Law Schools.

Works[]

Books

Wise has written four books. While reviewing "An American trilogy," the July/August, 2009 issue of VegNews called him the "John Grisham of the animal rights movement"

Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals, Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA, 2000 (called a "seminal work" by the Boston Globe (March 3, 2005); Time magazine observed "(o)nce the domain of activists, animal law has steadily gained respect among law schools and legal scholars since 2000, when ... Rattling the Cage provided an academic argument for granting legal rights to animals" (December 13, 2004)) .
Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, 2002.
Though the Heavens May Fall, Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005(cover review for Sunday New York Times Book Review, January 9, 2005).
An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery and Dominion Along the Banks of the Cape Fear River, Da Capo Press, 2009.

Book Chapters

"Animal law and animal sacrifice: Analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Santaria animal sacrifice in Hialeah," in A Communion Of Subjects – Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton, eds. Columbia University Press 2006)
"Entitling Nonhuman Animals to Fundamental Legal Rights on the Basis of Practical Autonomy," in Animals, Ethics, and Trade (Earthscan 2006)
"Resources on Animals and the Law," in Animals Are the Issue - Library Resources on Animal Issues (John M. Kistler, ed., Haworth Press 2004)
"Animal Rights, One Step at a Time,"in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, eds., Oxford University Press 2004)
"Untitled," The State of the Animals II (Humane Society of the United States, 2003)
"A Great Shout - Breaking the Barriers to Legal Rights for Great Apes," in Great Apes and Humans - The Ethics of Coexistence (Smithsonian Press, 2001), reprinted in Animal Law (Clare Palmer, ed. The International Library on Rights, Ashgate Publishing, forthcoming 2008), and in The Animal Ethics Reader (Susan J. Armstrong and Richard G. Boltzler, eds. Routledge 2003)

Law Review Articles

"Commentary, An Argument for the Basic Legal Rights of Farmed Animals," 106 Mich. L. Rev. First Impressions

http://www.michiganlawreview.org/firstimpressions/vol106/wise.pdf. (2008)

“Arguments in favour of basic legal rights for nonhumans,” Reform (Australian Law Reform Commission March, 2008)
"The entitlement of chimpanzees to the common law writs of habeas corpus and de homine replegiando to challenge their legal thinghood," 37(2) Golden Gate Law Review 219 (2007)
"Rattling the Cage Defended," 43 Boston College Law Review 623 (2002)
"Legal status of nonhuman animals," 8 Animal Law 1 (2002)(symposium participant)
"Animal Thing to Animal Person - Thoughts on Time, Place, and Theories," 5 Animal Law 59 (1999)
"Hardly a Revolution - The Eligibility of Nonhuman Animals for Dignity-Rights in a Liberal Democracy," 22 Vermont Law Review 793(1998)
"Recovery of Common Law Damages of Emotional Distress and Loss of Society for the Wrongful Deaths of Companion Animals," 4 Animal Law 33 (1998)
Dr. Jane Goodall and Steven M. Wise, "Why Chimpanzees are Entitled to Fundamental Legal Rights," Joint Presentation to Senior Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association, August 2, 1996, reprinted in 3 Animal Law 61 (1997)
“Legal Rights for Nonhuman Animals: The Case for Chimpanzees and Bonobos," 2 Animal Law 179 (1996).
“The Legal Thinghood of Nonhuman Animals,” 23(2) Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 471 (1996), reprinted in 3 Private Law Review (2003) and 4 Private Law Review (2004)(China University of Politics and Law Publishing)
"How Nonhuman Animals Became Trapped in a Nonexistent Universe,” 1 Animal Law 15 (1995)
"Scientific experimental conduct is not protected by the First Amendment," 6(4) Boston Bar Journal 20 (Sept./ Oct., 1992)
“Of Farm Animals and Justice,” 3 Pace Environmental Law Review 191 (1986)

Encyclopedia articles

"Animal Rights," Encyclopædia Britannica,http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-257090/animal-rights
"Should it be legal to use nonhumans in genetic research?" Encyclopedia of the Human Genome (2003) and Encyclopedia of the Life Sciences (2006)

Notes[]

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 "About the author", Steven Wise's home page.
↑ Website of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights.
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 Gale, "Biography".
↑ ^4.0 ^4.1 Sunstein, Cass R. "The Chimps' Day in Court", New York Times Book Review, February 20, 2000.

References[]

Gale Reference Team. "Biography – Wise, Steven M.", Contemporary Authors, Thomson-Gale, 2004.
Wise, Steven. "About the author", www.literati.net/Wise
CEFR. Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights (homepage), www.nonhumanrights.org
Sunstein, Cass R. "The Chimps' Day in Court", New York Times Book Review, February 20, 2000.
Wise, Steven. "The Problem with Being a Thing", Chapter One of Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals, 2000, online copy at www.nytimes.com

Steven M. Wise

Contents

Background[]

Animal personhood[]

Seminars[]

Works[]

See also[]

Notes[]

References[]

Further reading[]

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