Justice Barbara Jaffe, in Manhattan Supreme Court, extended an order to show cause on Monday to two primates, implying they could be entitled to the same rights that are granted to a human being seeking relief from unlawful or inhuman confinement. In a , Jaffe ordered Stony Brook University to provide legally sufficient reason for confining chimpanzees Hercules and Leo as subjects for medical experiments. If it fails to do so at a hearing scheduled for May 6, the chimps may be set free.
Animal rights activists have greeted the order as heartening news. Given the high level of intelligence and emotional complexity recognized in chimpanzees, many advocates have argued that chimps deserve, just like human beings, to be free from indefinite confinement, and that the law should reflect that. Many hope Jaffe鈥檚 decision will affect the status and rights of hundreds of other primates living in confinement in the United States.
Though the order is unprecedented, the Nonhuman Rights Project, which filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of the chimps in March, explicitly distinguishes it from a recognition of the two chimps as 鈥渓egal persons鈥 聽published Monday on the group鈥檚 website.聽On Tuesday afternoon, another 聽posted on the NRP website states聽that the words 鈥渉abeas corpus鈥 had been crossed out and struck out from the title, so that it now simply reads聽鈥淥rder to Show Cause.鈥