Humans are animals—animals with rights. So what kinds of rights do non-human animals deserve? The right to liberty? The right to nurse their young? The right to socialize?
In this episode, we interview two animal rights experts and ask them about chimps, cats, and personhood. We discuss common law, Jurassic Park, Ancient Rome, Woolly mammoths, and the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. This is Robot F. Kennedy.
Professor Sarah Schindler is currently a Fellow at the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She is an expert in the areas of land use law and urban policy, and teaches at the University of Maine School of Law.
Steven Wise is a legal scholar who specializes in animal protection issues, primatology, and animal intelligence. He has taught animal rights law at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, and Stanford University. He is a former president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and founder and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In 2016, he argued for the release of two chimpanzees before the New York Appellate Court, and the court is expected to issue its ruling in May of 2017.
