PRAISE FOR
Though the Heavens May Fall
The Landmark Trial that Led to the End of Human Slavery
Marilynne Robinson - The New York Times
Wise, the president of the Center
for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, traces with reverent care how
the question of the legality of slavery developed within England, culminating
in this famous trial.
Library Journal
Legal historian Wise examines how 18th-century English
abolitionists created legal arguments to challenge slavery. Granville
Sharp was a leading abolitionist whose legal failures and eventual success
are analyzed here in the context of 18th-century English law and common-law
precedents. Wise emphasizes two cases, Lewis v. Stapylton (1771) and
the trial of James Somerset (1772). In the latter case, Wise examines
Lord Chief Justice Mansfield's legal course to declaring slavery in England
as immoral and illegal since it was wrong to treat human beings as property.
Wise shows how Mansfield could interpret common law to meet the changing
needs of society. Wise uses historical analysis to draw connections between
these cases and later U.S. activities concerning freedom in the American
Revolution and Civil War. This thoughtful analysis provides an underpinning
for the social and legal context of slavery, making this a recommended
book for academic and larger public libraries.
-- Steven Puro, St. Louis
Univ.
Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information
PRAISE FOR
Drawing the Line
Nature
Provocative and disturbing...compelling and cogent...An important book.
Salon.com
Wise's accounts of animals' mental abilities are fascinating
and thought-provoking.
Wilson Quarterly
[Wise has] the skill and seriousness the subject deserves.
San Diego Union Tribune
People should read this book... scientists,anybody
who owns an animal,anybody who cares about the future of biological research.
PRAISE FOR
Rattling the Cage
Toward Legal Rights for Animals
From January
Magazine, May 17, 2000
Imagine
a four-year-old taken from his family, locked in a cage, subjected to medical
experiments and killed. His tormentors receive not prison sentences
but professional accolades and large grants. Steven Wise asks why we've allowed
this to happen. For complete review click
here.
The New York Times
Book Review
This is an impassioned, fascinating and in many ways startling book.
-- Cass R. Sunstein
Publishers Weekly
"In a groundbreaking study, Harvard lecturer Wise argues that
chimpanzees and bonobos (sometimes called "pygmy chimpanzees")
should be granted the status of legal personhood to guarantee the basic
protections of bodily integrity and freedom from harm.... Documenting the
treatment of our close primate cousins, which are routinely kidnapped for
biomedical research, slaughtered for their meat and caged in roadside
zoos, Wise notes that chimpanzees and bonobos are nearing
annihilation....This impassioned, closely argued brief presents a
formidable challenge to the treatment of animals perpetrated by
agribusiness, scientific research, the pharmaceutical industry, hunters,
live-animal traders and others. It's a clarion call for rethinking the
animal-human relationship."
From Booklist
January 1, 2000
Nonhuman animals are not "persons" in the legal sense and
therefore have no legal rights. Wise, an animal rights activist and
lawyer, argues for the entitlement of animals to legal rights in this
scholarly new book. The author defines exactly what is meant by legal
personhood through an overview of cases involving humans and demonstrates
how this definition can be applied to animals, specifically chimpanzees
and bonobos. The book's title is somewhat misleading, as the vast majority
of the author's arguments refer to these two great apes, our closest
relatives. The parallels drawn between legal arguments for human rights
and research showing that apes demonstrate the same mental capacities as
the human persons make for a compelling argument against the injustice of
denying basic legal rights to apes. The text is extensively footnoted with
quotes from a vast body of literature, legal and otherwise. Whether or not
readers are convinced by Wise's arguments, they will find much to think
about in this carefully reasoned and well-written book.
-- Nancy Bent
From Kirkus Reviews
A potentially historic work on the legal case for animal rights that
shoots itself in the paw with shrill terms and tactics. Wise, who teaches
animal-rights law at Harvard Law School and elsewhere, is a prominent
legal defender and activist for animals. His specialty is the highly
intelligent and endangered chimpanzee species favored by biomedical
researchers, zookeepers, and African chefs. Wise takes us to academic
facilities where scientists convincingly demonstrate the chimp's ability
to understand cause and effect, use tools, and even perform basic
mathematical calculations. The evidence is clear that these mistreated
creatures are more ``human'' than young or brain-damaged Homo sapiens.
Their neurology and genetic structure warrant reclassifying them within
the genus Homo. Therefore, argues Wise, chimpanzees deserve at least the
same legal rights and protections awarded to children and other people
unable to speak for themselves. Unfortunately, Wise switches at this point
from cogent attorney and law professor to agitated activist and
polemicist. He not only demands legal ``personhood'' for his simian
clients, but often refers to their destruction as ``genocide.'' Reviewing
the history of law and religion, he blames their insistence on the
sanctity of human life for ``the legal thinghood of nonhuman animals.''
Wise celebrates 19th-century atheism and scientism which, he believes,
proved ``that the universe was not designed at all, much less designed for
humans.'' In his narrow metal cage of a worldview, anyone who believes
that evolution was divinely directed, that beings who understand ethics
(not just basic syntax) may be supreme, or that some humans feel
biblically forbidden even from yoking two unequal beasts together (in the
name of divine animal rights) is a worse enemy of animals than the
enlightened scientists who routinely torture and maim them for knowledge
and profit. Radical monkeyshines ruin this well-intentioned treatise.
-- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus
Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
