A judge has issued an order to show cause why Happy, the elephant, is not entitled to relief on a writ of habeas corpus. In habeas cases there are procedures for denying petitions at an early stage, without issuing the writ, and the judge’s failure to do so here makes me sad. I’m not going […]

The Nonhuman Rights Project, under the leadership of Steven Wise, has sought a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Happy, the elephant, who lives in the Bronx Zoo in New York City. Why? According to the New York Post, Wise said that his group “is moving onto elephants because it ‘ran out of chimpanzees […]

I know I am supposed to be writing about Jesner v. Arab Bank, but the monkey selfie case calls. I wrote about the case back in November 2015, and I noted the settlement in September 2017, focusing particularly on the severe costs borne by David Slater, the wildlife photographer who placed the camera that took […]

The case of the day is Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. ex rel. Beulah et al. v. R.W. Commerford & Sons, Inc. (Conn. Super. Ct. 2017). I wrote a polemic about the case back in November 2017. The case was a petition for habeas corpus brought by Steven Wise’s group, the Nonhuman Rights Project, on behalf […]

I wrote back in 2015 about the Monkey Selfie case. As the name suggests, a monkey took a selfie using a camera that a nature photographer set up in the monkey’s forest. PETA then brought a lawsuit against the photographer, alleging, supposedly on behalf of the monkey, that the monkey owned the copyright to the […]