Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals [Paperback]

Steven M. Wise (Author), Jane Goodall (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2000

While the popular animal rights movement gains ever-increasing momentum, in the courts the dark ages prevail. The evolution of law that has brought fundamental rights to the most defenseless humans has yet to begin for other species. A human lost in a permanent vegetative state enjoys a large array of legal rights. But a chimpanzee—a creature who can communicate with language, count, understand the minds of others, feel a variety of emotions, live in a complex culture, and make and use tools—has no rights at all.Steven Wise, who has worked and communicated with the world’s most prominent primatologists, demonstrates that, based on the latest scientific findings, the cognitive, emotional, and social capacities of at least chimps and bonobos entitle them to freedom from imprisonment and abuse. His path-breaking, witty, and impeccably researched book has everything needed to convince judges, scientists, lawyers, and the millions of others who simply care about animals of the injustice of denying them basic legal rights.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Steven Wise has spent his legal career in courts across the United States, championing the interests of dogs, cats, dolphins, deer, goats, sheep, African gray parrots, and American bald eagles. In Rattling the Cage, Wise--who teaches "animal rights law" at several academic institutions, including Harvard Law School--presents a thorough survey of the legal, philosophical, and religious origins of humankind's inhumanity toward citizens of the animal kingdom. Wise's devotion for animals is evident as he explains how the bigoted notion that nonhuman creatures possess mere instrumental value rather than intrinsic value has led to their worldwide enslavement for human benefit.

Rattling the Cage offers Wise's argument to secure the blessings of liberty for chimpanzees and bonobos. Despite the cognitive, emotional, social, and sexual sophistication exhibited by both species, Wise acknowledges that advocating the legal personhood of what others might consider hairy little beasts leaves him vulnerable to ridicule and marginalization as a fringe academic. He compares his struggle to that of Galileo, recognizing that anachronistic cultural and religious beliefs may disable modern judges from ruling according to correct principles just as the irrational convictions of Galileo's contemporaries forced them to cling to an Earth-centered universe that no longer existed. "Think of a Fundamentalist Protestant faced with a decision about teaching evolution in the public schools or a Roman Catholic deciding a question of abortion rights," Wise suggests, then turns the rhetoric up a notch: "Is it surprising that Nazi judges dispensed Nazi justice and that racist judges dispensed racist justice?" Wise seems certain, though, that our concept of justice eventually will evolve to the point where no chimp or bonobo will be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law--perhaps the best for which any primate can hope, at least until apes preside over courts to administer a justice of their own making. --Tim Hogan

From Publishers Weekly

In a groundbreaking study, Harvard lecturer Wise argues that chimpanzees and bonobos (sometimes called "pygmy chimpanzees") should be granted the status of legal personhood to guarantee the basic protections of bodily integrity and freedom from harm. A lawyer who lectures on animal rights law, Wise has spent 20 years fighting for the interests of nonhuman primates, dolphins, deer, cats, dogs, bald eagles, goats and other species. Documenting the treatment of our close primate cousins, which are routinely kidnapped for biomedical research, slaughtered for their meat and caged in roadside zoos, Wise notes that chimpanzees and bonobos are nearing annihilation. Their DNA structure is a 99% match to humans', and our brain structures are incredibly similar. Furthermore, Wise cites studies of primate social life revealing that chimps exhibit keen sensitivity to others, conflict resolution, reciprocal exchanges and toolmaking abilities; "enculturated" chimps can add numerals and learn abstract symbols. Indeed, an increasing number of biologists insist that chimpanzees and humans should be grouped in the same genus, Homo. Ten years ago this book would have been ridiculed or ignored, but the tide is turning: in 1996, the British government banned the use of great apes in biomedical research, and respected international law commentators now support whales' legal right to life. Although one could argue that overlegislation is not the best way to combat society's maltreatment of animals, Wise's proposal to accord animals fundamental legal rights could some day be adopted (as chimpanzee expert Goodall believes it will be). This impassioned, closely argued brief presents a formidable challenge to the treatment of animals perpetrated by agribusiness, scientific research, the pharmaceutical industry, hunters, live-animal traders and others. It's a clarion call for rethinking the animal-human relationship. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 362 pages
• Publisher: Perseus Books; 1st edition (March 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738200654
• ISBN-13: 978-0738200651
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,394,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rattling the Law, January 16, 2000

By 

David Hoch (Gainesville, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Paperback)

RATTLING THE LAW

Just as Peter Singer and Tom Regan dramatically influenced the world of philosophy and environmental ethics by suggesting that nonhuman animals are worthy of moral consideration, this remarkable book by Steven Wise is a major contribution, if not the seminal work, in a developing body of jurisprudential writing that makes a case for the granting of appropriate legal rights to at least some non-human animals.

Rattling the Cage is a comprehensively researched and captivating argument for the extension of legal rights to chimpanzees and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees). It begins with an historical look at the origins of our pervasive and convenient cultural assumptions about the supposed inferiority of nonhuman beings and how that seemingly insurmountable prejudice is rooted in classical philosophy's concept of a Great Chain of Being that hierarchically places humans just below the Godly realms and all other animals far beneath man, and therefore deservedly subject to every human whim.

Wise argues that the untold suffering of nonhumans at the hands of our species has been dubiously justified through the ages by seemingly infinite variations of this Great Chain of Being theme, and that the time has come, with the assistance of scientific revelations modern technology has afforded us (through such disciplines as psychology, anthropology, physiology, and ethology), to show that some nonhumans are far closer to us in both cognitive capacities and emotional makeup than we have previously believed or allowed ourselves to realize. Wise makes his case by analyzing exhaustive and unfailingly interesting (and sometimes riveting) studies of primate cognition and behavior, as well as anecdotal tales that indelibly etch his argument in our minds, and when one reads stories of such chimps as Lucy, who made tea for internationally renowned primatologist, Roger Fouts, each morning before her lessons in signing, our hearts as well.

But, however thoroughly Wise makes the case for advanced cognition in chimpanzees, and in parts of the book such as his superb chapter on language and consciousness, he makes the case exceedingly well, the fundamental importance of his book lies elsewhere.

As an accomplished attorney with over twenty years experience representing nonhuman beings in court, Wise walks us through the difficulties of finding relief, if not justice, for such a clientele. He explains the difference between legal thinghood and legal personhood, and here begins what this reader considers to be Wise's greatest contribution to the cause of animal rights. He claims that the crucial judicial distinction between the two concepts lies in the capacity for and degree of autonomy the subject or party in question possesses or exhibits, and suddenly his exhaustive presentation of non-human primate cognition takes on newfound meaning. Wise is seriously suggesting that non-human primates deserve to be elevated to the status of legal persons rather than things.

While other highly accomplished attorneys and activists advocate legislation as the most effective route to animal legal rights (and he would surely and warmly welcome such legislation), Wise argues that the common law holds the greatest promise for the recognition of legal personhood and rights in animals.

Conventional wisdom holds that common law judges make rulings solely on the basis of precedent, regardless of the ever-changing contexts in which cases are decided, but Wise shows us with convincing clarity that common law judges act not only in accordance with precedent, but on the bases of policy and principle as well, and that such considerations provide a jurisprudential window through which judges might legitimately elevate chimpanzees to legal personhood and afford them what appropriate rights they deserve. (Anyone who doubts the power of policy and principle to motivate judges need only reflect upon Justice Harlan's historical dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, where he argued that separate but equal was an unacceptable racial divide, and the fact that his reasoning was adopted almost whole cloth half a century later when the Supreme Court discredited that precedent in Brown v. Board of Education.)

By no means does Wise believe that chimpanzees and bonobos are the only nonhumans entitled to legal rights, but feels the case can most readily be made for these creatures because they are "evolutionarily closest" to us. He no doubt understands the words of Harvard's legendary constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, who once wrote that "...the very process of recognizing rights in those...with whom we can already empathize could well pave the way for still further extensions as we move upward along the spiral of moral evolution."

Steven Wise has written a profoundly important book that may well present a blueprint for open-minded judges of conscience to grant long-overdue legal rights to our closest genetic cousins. But it is also contains a very well-written and deeply moving message to the educated lay reader, a plea for compassion and justice so emotionally potent that one will laugh and cry while Wise gradually, logically, and powerfully builds his case, a case that, with no small thanks to his provocative book, may someday soon be won.

54 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The case for chimpanzee and bonobo personhood., January 22, 2000

By 

Marjorie Cramer, MD, FACS (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Paperback)

Steven Wise, a professor of law at Harvard University presents a compelling case for re-defining the legal status of our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos (pigmy chimps) from "thinghood" to "personhood". He traces the history of the legal staus of animals from early middle- and near-eastern writings such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Pentateuch, through European and English common law up to the present, using material and precedents derived from the great human rights struggles of the past century. He demonstrates that the materials for such a shift in legal definiton already exist. All that is missing is a great judge who will make a decision that radically restructures already existing precedents while reaffirming fundamental principles. Professor Wise draws on a wide body of knowledge including the legal history of slavery, definitions of consciousness, similarities of chimpanzee and bonobo DNA and brain structure, the work of Jane Goodall and Roger Fouts and childhood developmental stages. This scholarly, excellently researched book (which is also very readable) brings us up to date on the arguments for re-defining creatures, who share with us 97% of DNA, as persons under the law.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging the Issues with an Open Mind, January 12, 2000

By 

Paul Waldau (Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Paperback)

These words came to mind again and again when I read this groundbreaking book about law, animals, and ethics --- engaging, creative, connecting, disciplined, encompassing, compassionate. Because the book weaves together many different modern concerns, it will challenge any reader's understanding of the nature of law and ethics generally, but especially as they relate to any living being, human or otherwise. And its readable style will force you to grapple with its many descriptive accounts and prescriptive suggestions. If you are of a conservative, traditional bent, you will find that, in one most basic and generic sense, the book can be seen a conservative argument. It honors traditional values such as dignity, liberty, and equality by examining them with an open mind. On the other hand, if you are of a liberal bent, you will resonate with the author's disciplined critique of the inherited paradigms that dominate contemporary American law. This is a book that any informed person should read, and it would make a good gift for those acquaintances who have strong opinions one way or the other about nonhuman animals or the current climate in which humans are re-thinking their relationship to the earth and its creatures.