Personhood: Who's Next?

Canada just celebrated its 84th anniversary of declaring women "persons" within the meaning of the law. Linda Greenhouse wrote about admiring the "living tree" metaphor of this law, which has grown and adapted along with developments in compassion and understanding through the years. Greenhouse likened it to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy's view that "...if the framers [of the U.S. Constitution] knew all the specifics of a just society, they would have written them down.”

Consistent with an evolving sense of compassion and understanding, this year India's Ministry of Environment and Forests recommended* that dolphins be declared "non-human persons" due to their "unusually high intelligence" with "their own specific rights." Hopefully other countries and cetaceans will follow, consistent with the Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans written by scientists of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Extending the concept of personhood to non-humans seems radical. But let's not forget that it also seemed radical when personhood was extended to women and slaves -- humans previously seen, like nonhuman animals today, as personal property and lacking in reason. Most people I mention the dolphin declaration to are surprised, but happily so. There is less resistance to declaring dolphins persons than there was to declaring women and slaves persons, because dolphins are merely being granted the right to be left alone and most people, or powerful interests, do not profit (in pecuniary or non-pecuniary ways) from holding dolphins in captivity for entertainment.

There is growing compassion and understanding for the inexplicable intelligence and sensitivity of other non-human animals, such as the other great apes and elephants. There has been more resistance to granting them personhood because not doing so has been profitable for humans along a variety of dimensions, including biomedical research, zoos, circuses, and the ivory trade. They also require a lot of land that humans wish to exploit or inhabit. These are not intellectually or morally sound reasons for failing to declare them persons with certain rights, however.

Based on what gets posted on social media outlets -- not to mention household expenditures -- it seems that most people consider their dogs to be non-human persons. "Dogs are people, too," according to recent articles in Canada and the U.S. reviewing the scientific documentation of dogs' complex intellectual and emotional lives and capacities. This is probably why people love their dogs so much and consider them part of the family. If dogs were declared non-human persons within the meaning of the law, they would need their own special set of rights as animals who have evolved in captivity.

Where there will be most resistance -- scars in the living tree -- is the rights of animals who, even if scientifically shown to be capable of reason and compassion, serve seemingly indispensable roles as exploited subjugates, like women and slaves once did. Pigs, reputed to be smarter than dogs, and even poultry, who former farm boy Nicolas Kristof has implored us not to think of as "birdbrains" due to their capacity for reason and loyalty, are among the many animals that fit this category. It would be inconvenient and costly, but extending basic rights, like the right to not live an artificially short life in terror and in pain, to such non-human animals would not only improve their lot, but the humanness and sustainability of the earth we share.

*Originally this post incorrectly stated that India had declared dolphins non-human persons. Russell Tenofsky from the Nonhuman Rights Project informed me this was only a recommendation made by India's Ministry of Environment and Forests.