Lawyer, Author Is Witness for the Defense of Animals

Animal law joined the curriculum at Harvard Law this year, taught by Steven Wise, an attorney who introduced the topic 11 years ago at the Vermont Law School.

Wise also teaches animal rights law at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago and, in one form or another, the subject also is on the roster at Yale, Georgetown, UCLA and Hastings law schools.

Wise, 48, is the man who legitimized animal rights as a law school subject. Twenty years ago, Wise was a criminal defense lawyer when the book “Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer made a huge impression on him. In short order Wise became an avid contributor to letters-to-the-editor columns. He explored animal rights groups such as the New England Anti-Vivisection Society and began attending conferences about the rights of animals.

In 1981, Wise took his first animal rights case, suing a veterinarian for malpractice over a dead dog. The dog owner took home a comfortable cash settlement, and Wise was on his way down a new career path called animal protection law. In his 20 years in the field, Wise has taken cases involving dolphins, deer, dogs and sundry primates.

Frequently, Wise is called to defend people whose “companion animals”--his preferred term for pets--have been ordered to be executed because of viciousness. Of about 150 such cases, Wise said not one client who stayed through the last appeal has lost a companion animal. He added that owners only rarely bring their companions to court.

“There’s a tension that crackles inside a courtroom,” he explained. “It makes people nervous, and it would affect an animal too.”

Wise deftly rebuffs suggestions that animal rights may pale in a world where, in some places, human rights are still in question. “Humans may not get their due, but they are legal persons with a tremendous number of varied rights. They’re not going to be eaten, or kidnapped and placed in cells to be used for biological research.”

For humans, “there’s a certain floor under which no one is allowed to fall. But virtually every animal falls beneath that floor,” said Wise, a man with gray hair and a rumply manner.

Wise elaborates on this position in his new book, “Rattling the Cage.”

Both in the book and in class, what he argues is that animals deserve “some kind of limited legal personhood.” All nonhuman animals lack rights, he said, “and at least some of them should have some rights.” How this should be done, he said, is a determination that needs to be made by judges and lawmakers.

As it stands, Wise said, most animals are treated in the law as things. “The idea of treating an elephant or a chimpanzee like a pen or a table is appalling to me,” he said. Wise is the first to agree that humans, seldom noted for a lack of self-importance, often make light of his field.

In fact, he treasures a doggie courtroom cartoon where the caption is “Rover v. Wade.” But as he pushes his students toward deeper questions about nonhuman rights, he reminds his class that, although most people don’t think about these issues, “they’re beginning to.”