If a corporation is a person, why is an animal no more than a chair?

Stephen M. Wise discusses the ways society shapes the development of the law in connection with the rising awareness that animals are not merely “things”:

Is it up to society to force a change in the law? Or will the law change society?

The law both leads and follows society. The legal system changes through the decision of judges or by legislatures enacting statutes. You saw this, for example, in the anti-slavery amendments to the U.S. Constitution in the 19th century and the numerous civil rights statutes of the 20th century. But the way the law changes and the way society changes are connected. People who try to change the law also depend upon changes in societal values, as well as upon scientific discoveries. In recognition of this, Rattling the Cage is crammed with reports about scientific discoveries on the nature of the cognition of chimpanzees and bonobos of the last 20 or 30 years. These discoveries form the springboard from which I can argue for their rights and personhood.

How do you think our view of animals will develop in the next 20 years?

It is going to develop in a complex way. First, a hierarchy of nonhuman animals will continue. Though nonhuman animals are considered legal things today, society does not view all nonhuman animals in the same way. Some we clearly value more than others. Even though chimpanzees don’t have any legal rights, we no longer euthanize them after they are no longer useful in medical experiments, as we do, say, to white mice. This fact both results from and drives the coming legal personhood of Great Apes. We’re beginning to see this not only in the U.S., but throughout the West. Westerners are also increasingly valuing their companion animals and I see increasing protection for them. The animals whom we thoughtlessly consume for food are being subjected to worse and worse conditions in the U.S. But an opposite trend is rising in [parts of] Europe. I think we will see the European trend expand even as factory farming in the U.S. increases. However, within the next 10 years, the American factory farming industry is going to learn how it has greatly overstepped and miscalculated just how much abuse of nonhuman animals used for food people are willing to accept. Stir in the environmental degradation that is its inevitable consort and there is going to be a backlash that will drive factory farming in the U.S. in the direction that Europe has taken and will, perhaps, drive at least some of it out of business.

There’s nothing radical about Wise’s position. The law already recognizes that artificial entities such as corporations are legal “persons” and are therefore, among other things, entitled to the protections accorded people under the Bill of Rights.