A Tale of Many Battles: Arguing Legal Personhood for Animals in the United States and India

Abstract

In this article, I focus on how the issue of considering animals as legal persons has been argued in court by the Nonhuman Rights Project led by Steven Wise in the United States and how this project was recently adopted and reinterpreted by an animal rights organisation in India in preparation for their own court battle. In turn, Indian cases raising the question of the legal personhood of animals and rivers have been used by Wise as examples to argue his case in court. The comparison will raise the question of how legal ideas and strategies regarding so-called ‘rights of nature’ travel around the world, giving rise to reciprocal appropriations and possible idealisations.