Nonhuman Rights Project

As intelligent as she is, Happy the elephant doesn't meet the definition of a "person" and is therefore not being illegally confined in the Bronx Zoo, New York's top court ruled on June 14 in a closely watched case for animal rights.

Attorney Steven Wise is on a crusade to prove that, as a matter of law, chimps are people too.
  
For that matter, so are dolphins, elephants, gorillas and orcas.
  
Wise made his argument at the TED Conference that wrapped up in Vancouver, Canada on Friday.
  
"I had to invent the field of animal juris prudence," Wise told AFP at TED.