Monkeys should be considered persons in the eyes of the law

1) To summarize, I hold that a right is a moral or legal claim, either very real or potential, that one party may exercise against either another person, group, community, or an even larger group, such as all of mankind. 2) In order to invoke a right, and to that end, in order to obtain rights at all, one must be able to comprehend, specifically, what rights entail. To this end, it can be said that there are certain cognitive processes required of a being to be able to both claim that one has rights, and subsequently, defend those rights, should they be impinged upon. 3) As far as our knowledge goes thus far, only humans are capable of such comprehensive thought. They are capable of thinking morally, and rationally; thus, they are able not only to understand the notion of rules as the law has set them out for us, but they are able to weigh the moral rights and wrongs of actions. 4) Morality is a very important dynamic, in terms of rights. Morality helps us to understand whether an action is correct or incorrect, when weighed against both our conscience and the laws that society has set out for us. 5) Similarly, this is where we derive mens rea from -- that is, the guilty mind; for when one commits an act that is "immoral" in both the eyes of themselves and of the law, it creates something of a guilty conscience. 6) Only humans are capable of being tried and found to have mens rea in court, thus, it would stand to reason that humans are the only sentient creatures possessing a conscience, and a moral, rational, thought process. 7) It is for this reason that other creatures, such as animals (and even very young children), cannot be tried in court; in both of these cases, we speak of a creature that cannot rationally reason for themselves, thus, they have no sense of morality, or what is right and wrong. 8) Furthermore, if we were to grant animals rights in particular, it would be a waste of effort. Animals cannot comprehend rights due to their inability to rationally process such things the way we do; and if they are capable of doing such things, they have no way of showing it, because while some (like monkeys) are capable of communicating with each other, as a whole, they have no way of communicating these things to human beings. 9) In addition, human beings have a significant amount of moral self-government, and are capable of making decisions of their own accord. They are also self-legislative, and are thus capable of exercising and responding to moral claims. 10) The same cannot be said for animals, however -- or any other sentient creature, for that matter. Seeing as how all of the aforementioned features of human beings are required for one to be able to possess rights, it stands to reason that because they are deficient in these regards, animals would not be able to possess nor exercise rights. 11) As I stated before, if we were to assign rights to animals -- and all sentient creatures, for that matter, even trees and the like, which cannot communicate at all -- or assert that when such a creature is mistreated, its "rights" are being violated, would be to abuse or misuse the word altogether. 12) A popular view on the matter of animals (and animal cruelty, especially) is that there is a general obligation to do no gratuitous harm to living creatures; another states that there is a general obligation to do good to living creatures when such a thing is reasonably within one"s power, or when someone is capable of doing so. 13) Neither of these views can be disputed by me -- for there is no excuse for treating an animal in any other way than humanely in our day-to-day interactions. And it is as fellow sentient creatures that we owe them this much. 14) What is disputable, however, is the mistaken misconception that holders of these views (or raisers of these objections, rather) -- which state that treating animals humanely is synonymous with treating them as humans. 15) This is simply not so. To treat something humanely would be to treat it in a proper, reverent manner. It does not necessarily follow, then, that treating something humanely would immediately grant it the rights that we, as human beings, have been granted; the two are entirely different concepts. 16) Going back to the concept of mens rea, I have established that courts are able to try human beings in cases where a crime has been committed because they are able to distinguish between morally acceptable and unacceptable acts, and then commit these acts, whatever they may be, of their own volition. The same, however, cannot be said for animals. 17) Animals can not and do not differentiate between morally acceptable and unacceptable acts, and have no established set of moral principles within their community. 18) Being that morals are the basis of the laws that govern our society, it stands to reason that a creature cannot and should not be recognized by the law if they do not have the capability to recognize and comprehend the principles established by the law. 19) This is primarily because animals have no capability to assess what is "right" or wrong; therefore, they are completely devoid of a guilty conscience, which establishes mens rea to begin with. 20) Therefore, to this end, my initial conclusion was that animals, such as monkeys, should not be viewed as persons in the eyes of the law.