Model Personhood Case With Great Ape Plaintiff: “From Property to Person - The Case of Evelyn Hart”
In the year 2000, Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal published the article "From Property to Person: The Case of Evelyn Hart" which includes a model brief on behalf of a plaintiff who demands equal rights beyond humanity. The article was most recently cited in the Bibliography of Cass R. Sunstein & Martha C. Nussbaum, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford, 2004). The article is also part of the syllabus of Loyola Law School’s animal law course, taught by Adjunct Professor Sonia Waisman, who is co-author of the law textbook Animal Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2006). The syllabus notes that the condition of “humanness” is not essential to becoming a “person” under the law and obtaining all the rights associated with such classification. Waisman adds that “these ideas may seem preposterous to some, but it was not so long ago that the concept of mental disability rights was unheard of as well.”
In the context of non-human personhood, this article marks the debut of a model U.S. Supreme Court brief in the legal literature. This is designed to spark further debate in law and philosophy journals, to enhance ethics courses, to be cited in court, and to be used in an actual case on behalf of a non-human plaintiff and her class.
Plaintiff Hart's sentience alone should suffice for legal personhood. Additionally, non-human apes possess the key traits which so obviously underlie the constitutional protections held by human persons that the irrationality of our prejudice against Hart --and, by extension, against other nonhuman apes — is unmistakable.
It is morally unjustifiable to treat sentient animals as items of chattel property. "From Property to Person: The Case of Evelyn Hart" makes a strong case that U.S. law already protects all apes, human or others. By describing the case of Nicholas Romeo, it also point out the injustice of denying respect to any sentient individual. We expect that Evelyn Hart's case will inspire jurists to act on this reality.
GRASP thanks web design specialists Carsten Scholvien and Chris Kelly for marathon work on the site, including the article with its unique footnote search function.