Nonhuman Rights to Personhood

2012 Dyson Distinguished Lecture, delivered April 26, 2012 at Pace Law School. Introduction by Prof. David N. Cassuto. Video available here

The Evolution of Animal Law since 1950

Over the last half century, the law has assumed an increasingly important place in animal protection even as it has begun to point in the direction of true legal rights for at least some nonhuman animals. In this chapter I briefly discuss five aspects of the law: anti-cruelty statutes; the necessity of obtaining standing to litigate on behalf of the interests of nonhuman animals; evolving protections for great apes; the movement toward legal rights for at least some nonhuman animals; and the state of legal education concerning animal protection

The Entitlement of Chimpanzees to the Common Law Writs of Habeas Corpus and de Homine Replegiando

In this Article, I claim that humans enslave chimpanzees and thereby deprive them of their bodily liberty and that chimpanzees should be entitled to use the common law writs of habeas corpus and de homine replegiando and to bring their common law claims to bodily liberty before courts. In Part I, I demonstrate that chimpanzees are genetically highly similar to humans and quite cognitively and socially complex. In Part II, I argue that flexibility is part of the common law\u27s basic structure, that legal personhood is one of the common law\u27s basic values, that the structure of the common law requires it to permit such a cause of action to go forward on its merits, and that the claim of chimpanzees to common law legal personhood should always be subject to common law re-evaluation. In Part III, I show that post-Conquest English villeins used writs that allowed them, under certain circumstances, to be declared free. In Part IV, I trace the history of the common law writ of de homine replegiando in England and America and argue that individual chimpanzees are entitled to use it to bring their claims to bodily liberty before common law courts. In Part V, I set out the history of the common law writ of habeas corpus in England and America and argue that individual chimpanzees are entitled to use that common law writ to bring their claims to bodily liberty before common law courts

The Entitlement of Chimpanzees to the Common Law Writs of Habeas Corpus and de Homine Replegiando

In this Article, I claim that humans enslave chimpanzees and thereby deprive them of their bodily liberty and that chimpanzees should be entitled to use the common law writs of habeas corpus and de homine replegiando and to bring their common law claims to bodily liberty before courts. In Part I, I demonstrate that chimpanzees are genetically highly similar to humans and quite cognitively and socially complex. In Part II, I argue that flexibility is part of the common law\u27s basic structure, that legal personhood is one of the common law\u27s basic values, that the structure of the common law requires it to permit such a cause of action to go forward on its merits, and that the claim of chimpanzees to common law legal personhood should always be subject to common law re-evaluation. In Part III, I show that post-Conquest English villeins used writs that allowed them, under certain circumstances, to be declared free. In Part IV, I trace the history of the common law writ of de homine replegiando in England and America and argue that individual chimpanzees are entitled to use it to bring their claims to bodily liberty before common law courts. In Part V, I set out the history of the common law writ of habeas corpus in England and America and argue that individual chimpanzees are entitled to use that common law writ to bring their claims to bodily liberty before common law courts

Positivity-preserving, energy stable numerical schemes for the Cahn-Hilliard equation with logarithmic potential

We present and analyze finite difference numerical schemes for the Allen Cahn/Cahn-Hilliard equation with a logarithmic Flory Huggins energy potential. Both the first order and second order accurate temporal algorithms are considered. In the first order scheme, we treat the nonlinear logarithmic terms and the surface diffusion term implicitly, and update the linear expansive term and the mobility explicitly. We provide a theoretical justification that, this numerical algorithm has a unique solution such that the positivity is always preserved for the logarithmic arguments. In particular, our analysis reveals a subtle fact: the singular nature of the logarithmic term around the values of $-1$ and 1 prevents the numerical solution reaching these singular values, so that the numerical scheme is always well-defined as long as the numerical solution stays similarly bounded at the previous time step. Furthermore, an unconditional energy stability of the numerical scheme is derived, without any restriction for the time step size. The unique solvability and the positivity-preserving property for the second order scheme are proved using similar ideas, in which the singular nature of the logarithmic term plays an essential role. For both the first and second order accurate schemes, we are able to derive an optimal rate convergence analysis, which gives the full order error estimate. The case with a non-constant mobility is analyzed as well. We also describe a practical and efficient multigrid solver for the proposed numerical schemes, and present some numerical results, which demonstrate the robustness of the numerical schemes