As scientists have studied the chimpanzee, they’ve found more and more similarities between humans and their closest living relatives. But when it comes to the courts, chimps and humans couldn’t be more different. Chimpanzees, like other animals, are not considered persons before the law. Instead, they are considered closer to property, a thing that can be bought and sold, albeit with some oversight by the government — too rarely exercised — in the form of animal-welfare regulations. Now a lawsuit filed on Dec. 2 in New York State seeks to fundamentally overthrow that distinction. The Nonhuman Rights Group, led by the animal-rights lawyer Steven Wise, filed papers with the state supreme court in Fulton County in New York State on Monday, asking that the courts recognize a captive chimpanzee called Tommy as a legal person with a limited right to liberty. The lawsuit seeks to remove Tommy from his owners in Gloversville, Fla., and place him in a sanctuary. The group says it plans to file additional lawsuits later this week on behalf of a chimp kept in a private home in Niagara Falls, and two other chimps owned by a research center and currently being used in experiments at Stony Brook University in New York State. (MORE: As Harvard Closes a Primate-Research Center, Are Lab Chimps Becoming a Thing of the Past?) What’s potentially revolutionary about the lawsuit is that it seeks to extend the concept of habeas corpus to a chimpanzee. Habeas corpus allows someone being held captive to seek relief by having a judge force his captors to explain why he is being held. It’s frequently used in cases alleging unlawful imprisonment, including those of detainees in Guantánamo. The lawsuit makes reference to a famous 1772 English case that dealt with an American slave named James Somerset, who had escaped from his owner in London, been recaptured and was set to be returned from slavery: With help from a group of abolitionist attorneys, Somerset’s godparents filed a writ of habeas corpus on Somerset’s behalf in order to challenge Somerset’s classification as a legal thing, and … Continue reading Do Chimps Have Human Rights? This Lawsuit Says Yes