Steven Wise, animal advocate of international renown, dies at 73

Steven Wise, a Coral Springs lawyer who achieved worldwide fame for his work to free animals from laboratories and zoos, has died of cancer. He was 73.

Wise, who started out as a trial lawyer, brought landmark cases on behalf of captive chimpanzees, elephants and other animals. He founded the Nonhuman Rights Project, which works to establish the principle that animals have legal rights. Although his cutting-edge theories rarely prevailed in court, his lawsuits, books and teaching led judges, scholars and elected officials to take seriously the idea that animals had interests of their own, beyond their status as the property of human beings.

“Steve’s dedication, intelligence and hard work has made the legal recognition of the personhood of nonhuman animals a real possibility in the not-too-distant future,” wrote the philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, on Wise’s online memorial. “Sad as it is that he is no longer with us, we have the satisfaction of knowing that he used his life well.”

He brought one notable case on behalf of Happy, an elephant kept at the Bronx Zoo. Although he lost in the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, the case was considered a landmark for having gotten so far in the legal system and for inspiring dissents from two court justices.

Wise pursued these lawsuits not simply in the service of some abstract legal argument but because he cared deeply about the animals shut up in laboratories and zoos, writing in detail about their cheerless lives in cells and cages. In his book Rattling the Cage, he wrote of a chimpanzee named Jerome, deliberately infected with HIV, chronically ill and confined to a windowless cell, living “bloated, depressed, sapped,” who “had not played in fresh air for 11 years.”

Born in 1950, Wise attended the College of William and Mary, where he became involved in the movement to stop the Vietnam War, then studied law at Boston University. After reading Singer’s book Animal Liberation, the landmark text of the animal rights movement, he began to find ways to help animals in court. From 1985 to 1995, Wise served as president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. He then founded the Nonhuman Rights Project, which brought cases on behalf of captive animals.

“Steve inspired us every day with his relentlessly cheerful determination in the face of any and all obstacles, his fearlessness, his utter clarity on the injustices nonhuman animals endure, and his vision for a world where nonhuman rights are recognized alongside human rights,” the Nonhuman Rights Project said in a statement. “Steve spent almost every waking hour for the last four decades thinking about the struggle for nonhuman rights. Among lawyers and legal scholars, he was one of the greats — a true visionary, pursuing fundamental change with an awe-inspiring breadth of knowledge of law, history, science, and social justice.

Thanks to his work, this trial lawyer from suburban Fort Lauderdale achieved notable academic prominence. He taught the first animal law course offered at Harvard Law School and went on to teach at other leading law schools, including those at the University of Miami, the University of Michigan and Stanford University.

He wrote four books, laying out both the abstract arguments for his views and showing in graphic detail the suffering of the animals he was trying to free. His books include “Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals,” “Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights,” “Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery,” and “An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion Along the Banks of the Cape Fear River.”

Wise is survived by his wife, Gail Price-Wise, his children, Roma Augusta and her husband Michael Augusta, Siena Wise, Christopher Wise, his step-daughter, Mariana Price, his brother, Robert Wise, and his canine companion, Yogi, according to a news release from the Nonhuman Rights Project.