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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

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Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most

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Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more

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Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Is Happy the

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Speaker 1: elephant unhappy living in solitude at the Bronx Zoo and

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Speaker 1: would she actually be happy living with other elephants at

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Speaker 1: a sanctuary? The Non Human Rights Project says the answer

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Speaker 1: to both questions is yes, and they're trying to get

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Speaker 1: a court to order the zoo to move Happy to

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Speaker 1: an elephant sanctuary. The forty seven year old Happy has

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Speaker 1: lived most of her life at the Bronx Zoo, but

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Speaker 1: she's been living alone since two thousand and six. The

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Speaker 1: Non Human Rights Project filed a habeas corpus petition in

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Speaker 1: upstate New York, claiming that Happy, the first elephant to

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Speaker 1: demonstrate self awareness in a mirror recognition test, should have

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Speaker 1: the aim rights as a person and be moved. The

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Speaker 1: Bronx Zoo says that Happy is happy where she is

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Speaker 1: and might suffer from being moved to an unfamiliar facility.

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Speaker 1: Joining me as Stephen Wise, the lead attorney for the

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Speaker 1: Non Human Rights Project. Steven tell us more about Happy.

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Speaker 1: Happy is a forty seven year old female Asian elephant

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Speaker 1: who was kidnapped from her home in Southeast Asia and

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Speaker 1: she was very small and taken to the United States.

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Speaker 1: And Happy has been imprisoned on about one acre of

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Speaker 1: land which she has to share with other elephants at

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Speaker 1: the Bronx Zoo for for forty years now. The Bronx

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Speaker 1: Zoo has issued several statements saying that Happy isn't lonely

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Speaker 1: and that she's better off staying in an environment that

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Speaker 1: she's been used to for forty years. Well, that's an

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Speaker 1: interesting argument for someone imprisoned forty years and then claims

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Speaker 1: because they've imprisoned him for forty years, they ought to

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Speaker 1: stay there. Uh. I think if you went into some

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Speaker 1: prisons and you made the same argument, some of the

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Speaker 1: prisoners might say, you know, I think I think I'd

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Speaker 1: like to leave. And one other problem is that you

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Speaker 1: know Happy, since being kidnapped fifty years ago, Happy has

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Speaker 1: no idea that there are sanctuaries out there. Happy has

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Speaker 1: no idea that there are places where the only other

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Speaker 1: elephant that she's staying with doesn't want to try to

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Speaker 1: attack her. She doesn't have any idea that there are

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Speaker 1: places where she can choose how to live their life,

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Speaker 1: her life. You know what elephants she's going to make

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Speaker 1: friends with when she's not going to make friends with

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Speaker 1: h And also the affidavits that the Bronx who filed,

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Speaker 1: none of them were by elephant experts. They were just

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Speaker 1: by suits corporate executives who told us how wonderfully Happy

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Speaker 1: was being treated. But none of them were by elephant experts.

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Speaker 1: And I challenged them to do that because the elephant

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Speaker 1: experts that we brought in who filed affidavits are amongst

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Speaker 1: the most experienced and best elephant experts in the world,

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Speaker 1: and they say that Happy needs to get out of

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Speaker 1: the Bronx suo. You know, like yesterday, Happy was the

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Speaker 1: first elephant to pass the mirror self recognition test. Will

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Speaker 1: you explain what that is and what it shows about her? Yes.

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Speaker 1: The mirror self recognition test was a test that was

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Speaker 1: first arrived in the nineteen seventies by Gordon Gallup. He

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Speaker 1: was working with chimpanzees. Now it's used for working with

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Speaker 1: young human infants and other other species. At the time,

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Speaker 1: Gallup put chimpanzees under anesthesia. While he did that, he

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Speaker 1: put red dots on their face. In fact, sometimes they

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Speaker 1: call it the red dot test. And then when they

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Speaker 1: came out of anesthesia, he gave them a mirror and

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Speaker 1: they would look into the mirror. And the question he

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Speaker 1: was asking was, when they saw a face staring up

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Speaker 1: at them with red dots, if they did anything, would

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Speaker 1: they touch the red dots on the mirror, or would

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Speaker 1: they touch the red dots on their face? And they

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Speaker 1: would generally touch the red dots on their face, and

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Speaker 1: that is generally understood to mean that they understand that

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Speaker 1: they're looking at themselves. In other words, they're not only conscious,

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Speaker 1: but they're self conscious. They understand that they're looking at themselves.

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Speaker 1: And Happy was the first elephant to successfully past the

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Speaker 1: mirror self recognition test, which is powerful evidence that when

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Speaker 1: Happy looks into a mirror, Happy understand she's looking at herself.

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Speaker 1: Explain the habeas corpus petition and import Habeas corpus is

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Speaker 1: a really ancient common law RiPP and habeas corpus is

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Speaker 1: Latin for you have the body, And what it means

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Speaker 1: is that someone has been imprisoned illegally, and if anyone

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Speaker 1: else can find out about that, they can then go

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Speaker 1: into court and file a petition for habeas corpus, saying, look,

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Speaker 1: I believe that this other person is being imprisoned against

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Speaker 1: her will. Would you issue the rid of habeas corpus

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Speaker 1: and it's served on the on the jailer, and the

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Speaker 1: jailer then is required to come into court and give

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Speaker 1: a legally sufficient reason why he thinks that he's allowed

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Speaker 1: to imprison the prisoner. Beginning in two thousand thirteen, the

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Speaker 1: Non Human Rights Project began using it to try to

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Speaker 1: test the legality of being able to imprison a non

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Speaker 1: human animal, first chimpanzee, now elephants, both in New York

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Speaker 1: and were also filing these cases in the state of

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Speaker 1: Connecticut as well. So it's clear that if Happy was

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Speaker 1: a human being, you couldn't just kidnap Happy and keep

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Speaker 1: her in a place for forty years. So the issue

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Speaker 1: is is Happy a person, because only a person can

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Speaker 1: use a rid of habeas corpus. But a person is

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Speaker 1: very clearly not a synonym for a human being. The

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Speaker 1: reason we know that is for many centuries, not all

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Speaker 1: human beings were seeing as persons who could use habeas corpus,

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Speaker 1: and the famous case in seventeen seventy two a Somerset

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Speaker 1: was the first time that a slave was seen as

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Speaker 1: a person who was able to use a rid of

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Speaker 1: habeas corpus. In eighteen seventy nine, there was a Native

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Speaker 1: American name Standing There, who was taken off of his

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Speaker 1: reservation in Nebraska and taken to Oklahoma, and he even

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Speaker 1: want to be there, so he came back. And when

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Speaker 1: he came back, he was jailed by the army, and

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Speaker 1: his lawyers brought a writ of habeas corpus to try

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Speaker 1: to get him out of jail, and the US government

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Speaker 1: claimed that a Native American was not a person and

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Speaker 1: could not use a rid of habeas corpus. And the

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Speaker 1: judge did not agree and said that native American is

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Speaker 1: a person, and he ordered standing there free. And so

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Speaker 1: the way you determine whether any entity is a person

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Speaker 1: is not a matter of biology. In fact, there are

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Speaker 1: cases by the High Court in New York that the

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Speaker 1: specifically says being a person is not a matter of biology.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's a matter of public policy. You know

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Speaker 1: that should that entity a count And in fact that

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Speaker 1: it's that way all over the English speaking world. So

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Speaker 1: for example, um New Zealand has made a river a person,

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Speaker 1: has made a National Parker person. The Colombian Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: has said that the Amazon rainforest is a person. What

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Speaker 1: it means is that you're an entity that has the

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Speaker 1: capacity for legal rights. It doesn't necessarily mean you have

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Speaker 1: any So in in our Habeas Corpus case, we're saying

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Speaker 1: that Happy has the right to bodily liberty that's protected

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Speaker 1: by a rit of Habeas corpus. And in doing that,

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Speaker 1: we put in all sorts of evidence, you know, explaining

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Speaker 1: to the court what an extraordinary cognitively complex being Happy is.

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Speaker 1: That not only can Happy see herself, not only is

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Speaker 1: she conscious and self conscious, but we show that she's

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Speaker 1: also an autonomous being, that she can choose how to

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Speaker 1: live her own life, she can choose who her friends are,

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Speaker 1: she can choose where to go, and we bring in

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Speaker 1: some of the world's famous experts saying things like elephants

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Speaker 1: when they travel together, actually plan and discuss their plans,

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Speaker 1: and they together make joint decisions as to where they're

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Speaker 1: going to go. And many people just don't understand how

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Speaker 1: extraordinarily cognitively complex and autonomous such beings as elephants are,

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Speaker 1: to keep them locked, To keep happy locked for forty

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Speaker 1: years in a place that's about as big as many

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Speaker 1: suburbanites backyard, just undermines and ignores and disrespects everything that

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Speaker 1: an elephant is. What stage of the litigation are you at?

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Speaker 1: We made it past the first step. The judge about

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Speaker 1: three weeks ago issued the order to show cause and

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Speaker 1: she ordered the Bronx suit to come at the court

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Speaker 1: last Friday when we were in court as well in

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Speaker 1: Orleans Supreme Court near the Canadian border. The other side

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Speaker 1: of the Bronx suit said that they didn't want to

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Speaker 1: be in order, being Supreme Court. They wanted the case

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Speaker 1: to be tried in the Bronx and we did not

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Speaker 1: want to do that. And the court then said she

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Speaker 1: was going to transfer the case to the Bronx. That

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Speaker 1: has not yet been done and we're waiting to see

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Speaker 1: exactly what what the order says, and it's likely we

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Speaker 1: will seek to appeal it. There's a reason why the

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Speaker 1: BRONXU wants to try the case in the Bronx and

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Speaker 1: we want to try the case up near the Canadian border,

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Speaker 1: in that the Pelic Court that oversees the courts, and

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Speaker 1: the Bronx has already said in one of our cases

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Speaker 1: that that only humans can have rights. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: the appellate court in this part of New York that's

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Speaker 1: near the Canadian border has said that it's a commonplace

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Speaker 1: that animals can be persons who have rights. So obviously

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Speaker 1: we don't want to try our case in a place

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Speaker 1: for the appellate court has said that that we can't win.

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Speaker 1: We want to try the case in a place where

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Speaker 1: the court will say, well, uh, you know what kind

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Speaker 1: of rights you're looking for, and they aren't going to

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Speaker 1: say that just because Happy is not a human, she

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Speaker 1: doesn't have any rights. Your fight for animal rights seems

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Speaker 1: like it's always uphill battle. Do you see attorney point coming?

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Speaker 1: The turning point has already come. In May May of

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen, about seven months ago, the first

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Speaker 1: a judge of a high court in the United States

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Speaker 1: issued an opinion as to the merits of the arguments

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Speaker 1: we were making, and that judge agreed that was a

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Speaker 1: chimpanzee case, that a chimpanzee was likely not a person

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Speaker 1: and was certainly he said, not a thing, and he

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Speaker 1: specifically criticized the court that had said that only a

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Speaker 1: human can have rights by saying that he didn't agree that. Basically,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a bias, it's bigotry, you know. And when

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Speaker 1: we try to remind the courts that we've been there

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Speaker 1: before that at one time only white people could have rights,

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Speaker 1: and the only reason black people couldn't is because there

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Speaker 1: was bias against them. There was a bias against women,

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Speaker 1: there's a bias against Native Americans like standing bears, And

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Speaker 1: we try to encourage the courts to understand how our

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Speaker 1: arguments are placed within the context of history, where there

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Speaker 1: are biases against those who are not seen as being

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Speaker 1: worthy of of having rights, and one by one over

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Speaker 1: the years they're knocked down, and that we're just simply

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Speaker 1: moving on to non human animals now, such as elephants

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Speaker 1: and chimpanzees and probably others. So we did have the

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Speaker 1: only high court jug in the United States who has

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Speaker 1: given an opinion as the merits of our case, I

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Speaker 1: thought they were good. Then a month after that, in

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Speaker 1: the appellate court that oversees where we were filing suit,

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Speaker 1: that court did say that it is a commonplace that

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Speaker 1: corporations and animals can be persons which means that they

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Speaker 1: have the capacity for right right. So in the last

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Speaker 1: year we've had two of these cases come down just

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Speaker 1: in the in the state of New York, and so

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Speaker 1: the turning point, you know, is already happening. We had

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Speaker 1: received our first rate of habeas corpus in two thousand

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Speaker 1: fifteen on behalf of chimpanzee. Now we received our second

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Speaker 1: rate of habeas corpus two thousand eighteen on half of

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Speaker 1: an elephant. So things are turning here and not not

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Speaker 1: just here. A chimpanzee named Sicilian in two thousand seventeen

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Speaker 1: had a rate of habeas corpus issued against the zoo

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Speaker 1: that was holding her. Cilia was moved to sanctuary in Brazil.

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Speaker 1: It's actually already begun and now we just have to

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Speaker 1: continue our fight. It's it's that way in every civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement. The Non Human Rights Project, how we characterize ourselves.

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Speaker 1: We don't call ourselves an animal rights organization. We call

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Speaker 1: ourselves a civil rights organization that focuses on the illegal

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Speaker 1: rights of non human animals. That's Stephen Wise of the

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Speaker 1: Non Human Rights Project. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Law podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show

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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg Ye