Goodall Jane - Rattling The Cage: Toward Legal Rights For Animals

Steven Wise has written a path-breaking book that makes it impossible to continue thinking of animals as mere property. He has shown the way forward, out of the cage in which the law has placed animals. Every lawyer, every judge, and every legislator should read this book.

Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation

In good lawyerly fashion, Wise offers a wide range of arguments on behalf of animal rights... an impassioned, fascinating, and in many ways startling book... [Wise] gives us compelling reasons to be skeptical of any simple dichotomy between human beings and other animals, and he demonstrates that the law ought to do much more than it now does to prevent animal suffering and abuse.

Cass Sunstein, New York Times Book Review

An important addition to the growing library of animal law resources that serves to expand traditional notions of justice and equity... Even if one disagrees with Mr. Wise, he raises important issues that will hopefully make every reader look at our current legal system a little differently and at the creatures around us more compassionately.

New York Law Journal

Steven Wise has turned a passion for animals into a legal battlefield.

Boston Globe

An extraordinary book, beautifully written, and carefully reasoned. It is every law school teachers hope that a former student will write a book like this oneoriginal, cogently argued, and compassionate. Steven Wises lifetime work of protecting and pursuing animal rights informs every page of this compelling book, just as his keen analytical mind puts the fundamental issues to us in a way we cannot ignore.

Daniel Coquillette, former Dean of Boston College Law School

This is one of those rare books that are deeply troubling in the best sense of the word, intellectually and ethically. It puts on trial a part of our human self-image that has made us less noble than we wish to be.

E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

While most attorneys in this movement lobby for anti-cruelty statutes or go to court on behalf of outraged pet owners, Wise stands apart in the belief that he can reshape the legal concepts of person and property through common law.

Associated Press

The issue as to what our responsibility is to the great apes, and to the chimpanzees and bonobos in particular, is a captive of historical perspectives of centuries past and is in dire need of being redefined in terms of modern science, values, and the law... Steven Wise is thoroughly prepared, educated, and competent to define a rational and moral and ethical legal relationship between humans and the great apes.

E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane M. Rumbaugh, Georgia State University

When animals will be able to sue human beings for battery or even wrongful imprisonment... Wise will be there to represent them.

American Bar Association Journal

A marvelous book, so thoroughly researched and so totally convincing. It is the most compelling argument of its kind to support what many of us already believe, that animals cannot be treated as things but should be recognized as sentient beings to which we must apply the moral principles we so blindly reserve for our own species. Its hard to think of a better book to guide our treatment of animals in the new century.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

[Wise] has an eye for evocative detail and an interest in the trappings and procedures of an 18th-century courtroom that do as much to engage the reader as the drama of the trials themselves.

Marilynne Robinson, New York Times Book Review (cover review)

A thorough and convincing account of the case that led to the official banning of slavery in England.

New York Review of Books

[Wise is] a leading advocate for non-human animal rights... An important book to read because it challenges all of us to rethink where and why we draw the line.

Nature

A groundbreaking book. A page-turner.

Library Journal

WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

STEVEN M. WISE

FOREWORD BY JANE GOODALL

Copyright 2000 by Steven M. Wise

Preface copyright 2014 by Steven M. Wise

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress. First Da Capo Press edition 2000

Published as a Merloyd Lawrence Book by Da Capo Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

www.dacapopress.com

eBOOK ISBN: ISBN 978-0-306-82400-5

Text design by Jeff Williams

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For Jerom
a person, not a thing