Steven Wise Live Guest Chat

ARZone is pleased to announce this week’s Live Guest Chat.

Professor Steven M Wise, described by USA Today as ‘America’s best-known animal lawyer’, has practiced animal protection law for 30 years. The first person to teach a class on Animal Law at Harvard Law School, Steven has taught "Animal Rights Law" or "Animal Rights Jurisprudence" for 20 years at many law schools, including University of Miami, Vermont, Lewis and Clark, St. Thomas, and John Marshal. Former president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, founder and president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, he has written four books, and numerous law review and popular articles about animal rights and has collaborated and communicated for years with leading scientists in the fields of primatology and animal intelligence and behavior.

Steven argues that chimpanzees, bonobos (sometimes called "pygmy chimpanzees"), elephants, parrots, dolphins, orangutans, and gorillas should be granted the status of legal personhood to guarantee the basic protections of bodily integrity and freedom from harm.

He has long directed the Nonhuman Rights Project (www.nonhumanrightsproject.org), which is currently comprised of 50 researchers from law, political science, natural science, sociology, psychology, mathematics, public relations, and other disciplines. The NhRP intends to file the first path-breaking lawsuits that demand that a nonhuman animal be recognized as possessing certain fundamental rights under the common law.

While reviewing "An American trilogy," the July/August, 2009 issue of VegNews called Wise the "John Grisham of the animal rights movement". His books are:

• Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (2000)
• Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights (2002)
• Though the Heavens May Fall (2005)
• An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery and Dominion Along the Banks of the Cape Fear River (2009)

This is an event for which questions must be submitted to ARZone prior to Midnight GMT, Wednesday 11 March via email to Carolyn@ARZone.net.

ARZone is supportive of education, critical thinking, rational discourse, and aims to provoke intelligent dialogue about issues that most concern members of the animal advocacy movement.

ARZone does not endorse or promote the views of its guests and forum participants; ARZone does endorse and promote creative education efforts.

CHAT TIMES:
3:00pm           Sat 14th          Pacific Time
4:00pm           Sat 14th          Mountain Time
5:00pm           Sat 14th          Central Time
6:00pm           Sat 14th          Eastern Time
11:00pm         Sat 14th          UK Time
12.00am         Sat 14th          Madrid, Spain
8:00am           Sun 15th         Australian Eastern Standard Time

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