Legal rights to apes
The Spanish Parliament recently passed a non-binding resolution granting legal rights to apes. While it will allow apes to be kept in zoos, it will not allow them to be used in circuses or in other performances, nor would it allow research on them, even in the name of medical experimentation, if it would cause them harm. It also would illegalize killing apes, unless it were necessary to do so in self-defense.
Is America ready to endow animals with legal rights?
If so, which right(s)? Should they be the same for all animals?
Which animals should be granted such rights and what should the determining factors be?
Those animals which share a certain percentage of our DNA?
Those animals who live in complex social and hierarchical societies?
Those animals who can demonstrate a sense of self?
Those animals who demonstrate identifiably human emotions, such as happiness, grief, loneliness, etc.?
Things to consider:
We grant legal rights to corporations and they are non-human.
We diminish legal rights for other classes of humans, such as children, convicted felons and those adjudged to be insane.
How should this affect this issue?