“Petitioner urges this Court to recognize its right on behalf of Happy, an elephant, to invoke the protections of the writ to challenge her confinement at the Bronx Zoo. However, despite the awesome power of the writ of habeas corpus and its enduring use throughout the centuries, no court of this State—or any other—has ever held the writ applicable to a nonhuman animal. Nothing in our precedent or, in fact, that of any other state or federal court, provides support for the notion that the writ of habeas corpus is or should be applicable to nonhuman animals.”
“The selective capacity for autonomy, intelligence, and emotion of a particular nonhuman animal species is not a determinative factor in whether the writ is available as such factors are not what makes a person detained qualified to seek the writ. Rather, the great writ protects the right to liberty of humans because they are humans with certain fundamental liberty rights recognized by law” writes New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Michelle DiFiore in the majority opinion ruling against Happy the elephant’s personhood.