Steven M. Wise (born 1952) is an American legal scholar who specializes in
animal protection issues,
primatology
Primatology is the scientific study of primates. It is a diverse discipline at the boundary between mammalogy and anthropology, and researchers can be found in academic departments of anatomy, anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, vete ...
, and
animal intelligence
Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influence ...
. He teaches
animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their Utilitarianism, utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding s ...
law at
Harvard Law School,
Vermont Law School
Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLGS) is a private law and public policy graduate school in South Royalton, Vermont. It offers several degrees, including Juris Doctor (JD), Master of Laws (LLM) in Environmental Law, Master of Environmental Law ...
,
John Marshall Law School,
Lewis & Clark Law School
The Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College (also known as Lewis & Clark Law School), is an American Bar Association-approved private law school in Portland, Oregon.
The law school received ABA approval in 1970 and joined the As ...
, and
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
School of Veterinary Medicine. He is a former president of the
Animal Legal Defense Fund
The Animal Legal Defense Fund is an animal law advocacy organization. Its stated mission is to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. It accomplishes this by filing high-impact lawsuits to protect an ...
and founder and president of the
Nonhuman Rights Project
The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) is an American nonprofit animal rights organization seeking to change the legal status of at least some nonhuman animals from that of property to that of persons, with a goal of securing rights to bodily libert ...
.
["About the author"]
, Steven Wise's home page. The ''
Yale Law Journal'' has called him "one of the pistons of the
animal rights movement."
Wise is the author of ''
An American Trilogy
"An American Trilogy" is a 1972 song medley arranged by country composer Mickey Newbury and popularized by Elvis Presley, who included it as a showstopper in his concert routines. The medley uses three 19th-century songs:
*"Dixie" — a popula ...
'' (2009), which 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
A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century.
Slavery
Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive ...
, and finally the site of factory
hog farms and the world's largest slaughterhouse. His book, ''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
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...
slave markets, which gave impetus to the
movement to abolish slavery in Britain and the United States (see
Somersett's Case
''Somerset v Stewart'' (177298 ER 499(also known as ''Somersett's case'', ''v. XX Sommersett v Steuart and the Mansfield Judgment)'' is a judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772, relating to the right of an enslaved person on E ...
). He also wrote ''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.
The documentary ''
Unlocking the Cage
''Unlocking the Cage'' is a 2016 American documentary film about the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) and lawyer Steven Wise's efforts to grant limited legal personhood rights to chimpanzees, whales, dolphins and elephants. It was direct ...
'' (2016) follows Wise in parts of his struggle for chimpanzees.
Background
Wise received his undergraduate education in chemistry at the
College of William & Mary
The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William I ...
in
Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. It is ...
. Wise first became interested in politics through his involvement in the
anti-Vietnam War movement
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War (before) or anti-Vietnam War movement (present) began with demonstrations in 1965 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social mov ...
while at William & Mary. Wise studied law at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
and was awarded his
J.D. there in 1976, then became a personal injury lawyer. He was inspired to move into the area of
animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their Utilitarianism, utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding s ...
after reading
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a Secularit ...
's ''
Animal Liberation'' (1975),
[Gale, "Biography".] often referred to as "the bible of the
animal liberation movement
The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, ...
". A practicing animal protection attorney, he is president of the nonprofit Nonhuman Rights Project, 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
Coral Springs, officially the City of Coral Springs, is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States. The city is located approximately northwest of Fort Lauderdale. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 134,394. It is a ...
, with his children Chris and Siena.
Animal personhood
Wise's position on animal rights is that some animals, particularly
primate
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians ( monkeys and apes, the latter including ...
s, 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 — must know that he or she exists. Wise argues that
chimpanzees,
bonobos, elephants, parrots, dolphins,
orangutan
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genu ...
s, and
gorilla
Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...
s meet these criteria.
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."
[Sunstein, Cass R]
"The Chimps' Day in Court"
''New York Times Book Review'', February 20, 2000.
He writes in "The Problem with Being a Thing" in ''Rattling the Cage'':
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
The Emory National Primate Research Center (formerly known as Yerkes National Primate Research Center) located in Atlanta, Georgia, owned by Emory University, is a center of biomedical and behavioral research, is dedicated to improving human and a ...
, 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
Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 ...
, then flown to
Gambia, where she was shot and skinned by a poacher, and her feet and hands hacked off for sale as trophies.
Seminars
Wise has been profiled in ''Who's Who in the World'' as well as other editions of Who's Who since 2005. He is a frequent guest on a wide variety of television and radio news and talk shows throughout Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and North America.
Wise speaks frequently on topics related to animal rights law at law schools, legal conferences, and universities throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa, including
Harvard Law School,
Monash University Law School, and the
University of Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...
among others.
He has taught
animal rights law and jurisprudence at the Harvard,
Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...
,
Lewis and Clark,
University of Miami
The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, i ...
,
St. Thomas, and
John Marshall Law Schools.
Works
Books
* ''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 "
ce 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. (a review
)
See also
*
Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute
*
List of animal rights advocates
*
Stephen R. L. Clark
*
Steven Best
*
Gary Francione
Gary Lawrence Francione (born May 1954) is an American academic in the fields of law and philosophy. He is Board of Governors Professor of Law and Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is also a visitin ...
*
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Seen as the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best kn ...
*
Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Elizabeth Newkirk (née Ward; born June 11, 1949) is a British-American animal activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several ...
*
Tom Regan
Tom Regan (; November 28, 1938 – February 17, 2017) was an American philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he had taught from 1967 until his reti ...
*
Richard D. Ryder
*
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a Secularit ...
*
Washoe
References
External links
*
*
"Chimps have feelings and thoughts. They should also have rights" (TED2015)*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wise, Steven M.
1952 births
Living people
American animal rights scholars
American anti–Vietnam War activists
American legal scholars
Animal lawyers
Harvard Law School faculty
John Marshall Law School (Chicago) faculty
Lewis & Clark College faculty
Tufts University faculty
Vermont Law and Graduate School faculty