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Trailblazing Animal Rights Lawyer Steven Wise Passes Away at 73

Renowned animal rights lawyer, Steven M. Wise, known for his pioneering efforts to secure legal rights for animals,passed away at age 73 on February 15, 2024, after a prolonged illness. Wise founded the influential Nonhuman Rights Project in 1995, advocating for animals' recognition as legal persons with inherent rights. His groundbreaking cases, including advocating for chimpanzees and elephants, shifted legal discourse on animal personhood. Despite encountering legal obstacles, Wise's work shed light on the plight of captive animals and prompted societal recognition of their suffering. Wise also made significant contributions to academia, teaching at esteemed institutions and authoring numerous influential law review articles and books on animal legal personhood.

New Book Explore Legal, Ethical and Philosophical Aspects of Animal Rights

Raymond Wacks, Animal Lives Matter: The Continuing Quest for Justice (India: Routledge India, 2004).

Summary: Animal Lives Matter provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal, philosophical, and ethical aspects of animal rights. It argues that the subject extends beyond the matter of our obligations towards animals, to include our wider responsibilities for protecting the environment. Drawing on numerous moral, political, legal, religious, and philosophical theories including utilitarianism, deontology, rights theory, social contractarianism, and the capabilities approach, the author meticulously examines the questions of sentience, speciesism, personhood, and human exceptionalism. Lucid, nuanced, and academically rigorous, this important book will be an essential resource for scholars of law, politics, philosophy, ethics, as well as policy makers and the general reader.

Honolulu Judge Dismisses Nonhuman Rights Project's Case for Elephant Liberty

Hawaii First Circuit Court Judge Gary W.B. Chang granted the Honolulu Zoo's motion to dismiss the Nonhuman Rights Project's (NhRP) case on behalf of elephants Mari and Vaigai. The NhRP sought a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the two elephants, demanding the elephants’ right to liberty and release to a sanctuary. Judge Chang ruled that the writ of habeas corpus is limited to humans and dismissed the case "without prejudice," leaving room for reconsideration if another legal remedy is identified. The NhRP plans to appeal the decision, arguing that existing animal welfare laws fail to adequately protect nonhuman animals like Mari and Vaigai, and advocating for an extension of habeas corpus protections to address their unjust captivity.

Colorado Court Dismisses Petition Seeking Release of Elephants from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

An El Paso County Court dismissed a habeas corpus petition filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) against the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, calling for the release of five African Elephants. The petition aimed to secure the elephants' transfer to an elephant sanctuary, alleging the zoo's violation of their bodily liberty. The judge ruled that nonhuman animals lack standing for habeas corpus petitions in Colorado, emphasizing that no court has recognized their legal “personhood.” The NhRP is considering further legal steps, potentially appealing the case to higher courts.

New Book Imagines Society Based on Animal Rights

Steve Cooke, “What Are Animal Rights For?” (UK: Bristol University Press, 2023).

Summary: The field of animal rights raises big questions about how humans treat the other animals with which we share the planet. These questions are becoming more pressing as livestock farming exerts an ever-greater toll on the planet and the animals themselves, and we learn more about their capacity to think and experience pain. This book shows why animals ought to have greater rights and what the world might look like if they did.

New Book Exposes Root Cause of Injustice, from Sexism to Speciesism

Dr. Melanie Joy, “How to End Injustice Everywhere: Understanding the Common Denominator Driving All Injustices, to Create a Better World for Humans, Animals, and the Planet” (US: Lantern Publishing & Media, 2023).

Summary: In this eye-opening and compelling work, psychologist Melanie Joy reveals the common denominator driving all forms of injustice. The mentality that drives us to oppress and abuse humans is the same mentality that drives us to oppress and abuse nonhumans and the environment, as well as those in our own groups working for justice.

How to End Injustice Everywhere offers a fascinating examination of the psychology and structure of unjust systems and behaviors. It also offers practical tools to help raise awareness of these systems and dynamics, reduce infighting, and build more resilient and impactful justice movements.

Nonhuman Rights Projects Files Habeus Corpus Petition on Behalf of Five Elephants in Colorado

Judge Eric Bentley of the El Paso County District Court in Colorado, United States has ordered the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to respond to a habeas corpus petition submitted by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) regarding the release of five elephants named Jambo, Kimba, LouLou, Lucky, and Missy. The petition asserts that the elephants suffer due to their confinement and highlights the crucial importance of acknowledging elephants' fundamental right to liberty. The outcome of a potential trial will determine what happens to the elephants. The NhRP has committed to covering the expenses associated with transporting the elephants if they are ultimately set free.

Graphic Novel Explores Happy the Elephant’s Legal Battle for Personhood

Sam Machado et al, Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood (US: Island Press, 2023).

Summary: Happy has lived at the Bronx Zoo for most of her 48 years, and for more than a decade has remained largely isolated and lonely. Like all elephants, Happy has a complex mind and a deep social, intellectual, and emotional life; she desires to make choices and has a sense of self-recognition. But like all nonhuman animals, Happy is considered a thing in the eye of the law, with no fundamental rights. Due to a series of groundbreaking legal cases, however, this is beginning to change—and Happy’s liberation is at the forefront. A vibrant and personal graphic novel, Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood traces this moving story and makes the legal and scientific case for animal personhood.

New Book Explores Relationship Between Anthropocentrism and International Law

Vincent Chapaux et al (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of International Law and Anthropocentrism (UK: Routledge, 2023).

Summary: This handbook explores, contextualises and critiques the relationship between anthropocentrism – the idea that human beings are socially and politically at the centre of the cosmos – and international law.

While the critical study of anthropocentrism has been under way for several years, it has either focused on specific subfields of international law or emanated from two distinctive strands inspired by the animal rights movement and deep ecology. This handbook offers a broader study of anthropocentrism in international law as a global legal system and academic field. It assesses the extent to which current international law is anthropocentric, contextualises that claim in relation to broader critical theories of anthropocentrism, and explores alternative ways for international law to organise relations between humans and other living and non-living entities.

This book will interest international lawyers, environmental lawyers, legal theorists, social theorists, and those concerned with the philosophy and ethics of ecology and the non-human realms.

Updated Version of Peter Singer’s Classic “Animal Liberation” Available for Pre-Order

Peter Singer, “Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed” (US: Harper Perennial, 2023).

Summary: Few books maintain their relevance – and have remained continuously in print – nearly 50 years after they were first published. Animal Liberation, one of TIME’s “All-TIME 100 Best Non-Fiction Books” is one such book. Since its original publication in 1975, this ground breaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation Now, Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures, destroying the spurious justifications behind them and showing us just how woefully we have been misled.

Now, for the first time since its original publication, Singer returns to the major arguments and examples and brings us to the current moment. This edition, revised from top to bottom, covers important reforms in the European Union, and now in various U.S. states, but on the flip side, Singer shows us the impact of the huge expansion of factory farming due to the exploding demand for animal products in China. Further, meat consumption is taking a toll on the environment, and factory farms pose a profound risk for spreading new viruses even worse than COVID-19.

Animal Liberation Now includes alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.

This title is available for pre-order and will be released on May 23rd, 2023. He will also be doing a speaking tour in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.