Steven M. Wise: A Tribute

On February 15th, 2024, Steven M. Wise, lawyer, lecturer, author, and fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, sadly died. Steve championed the rights of nonhuman animals and his pioneering contribution put the discussion of the status of animals firmly on the legal agenda. Words are seldom adequate in these circumstances, but some words of praise and gratitude are essential.Steve was a giant in the field of animal law. When a discussion takes place about whether animals should be considered legal persons, it is invariably associated with his name, and the organization he created, namely the Nonhuman Rights Project (n.d.). He argued that the legal classification of animals as “things” and humans as “persons” is a distinction that is no longer credible (if it ever was). “For four thousand years, a thick and impenetrable legal wall has separated all human from nonhuman animals . . . We have assigned ourselves, alone among the million animal species, the status of ‘legal persons’” (Wise, 2000, p. 4). On the other side of the “wall,” nonhuman animals “are ‘legal things.’ Their most basic and fundamental interests—their pains, their lives, their freedoms—are intentionally ignored, often maliciously trampled, and routinely abused” (Wise, 2000, p. 4). Steve dedicated his life to trying to break through this legal wall.He modelled the strategy of Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and their legal strategy for the advancement of women's rights in the 1970s and 1980s. In the same way that the ACLU picked cases to try and highlight the inequality of the law with regard to women, so the NhRP picks its cases in order to try to highlight the need to bring about legal change for animals. The strategy is focused on the fundamental values of jurisprudence and the founding ideas of the US Constitution, namely, “autonomy, liberty, and equality” (Wise, 2022, p. 118). The goal is to open up the discussion of the possibility of animals being considered legal persons rather than things, especially in the minds of US judges.The strategy of bringing suit on behalf of individual animals for a writ of habeas corpus—the right to bodily liberty—has brought both popular and academic attention to the legal cause of animal rights. This is seen perhaps most clearly in HBO's 2016 documentary about Steve and the NhRP called Unlocking the Cage, in which he claims the strategy is to “kick the first door in” (First Run Features, 2016). The suits brought by the NhRP on behalf of nonhuman persons, notably Tommy the chimpanzee and Happy the elephant, although unsuccessful, changed the legal landscape by putting the issue on the legal map and producing dissenting opinions, which may in time constitute legal precedents. As with all attempts to break new ground, Steve's approach has attracted its share of criticism and praise, but regardless of whether you agree with the approach, his massive contribution to the field of animal law is undeniable. Thanks to Steve, lawyers from India to Argentina are taking up the cause of legal personhood for animals and some are even winning (Wise, 2022, pp. 125–126).Theorists and advocates are full of ideas about how the status of animals should be improved, but they often lack corresponding strategies of how to turn their ideas into action. One of the things that made Steve such a pioneer was not just his sense of the problem, but in offering one clear strategy as to how progress might be achieved. Perhaps the greatest legacy that Steve leaves is to inspire us all to think strategically about how to advance the cause.Clair Linzey and Andrew Linzey