ABSTRACT
In ruling against the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) and denying habeas corpus relief to Kiko and Tommy, the courts relied on an inconsistent and, at times, incoherent understanding of what it means to be a person. This chapter addresses the courts' claim that personhood is a function of community membership and requires the right kind of connection to the human community. This view comes in two different but related versions: the personhood-by-proxy account and the social personhood account. Some critics of chimpanzee personhood have argued that rather than fighting to secure legal personhood for chimpanzees, the NhRP should fight to expand the options available in the US legal system to include a third category that better reflects our collective views about the legal status of nonhuman animals. The notion that objects in the world can be neatly pigeonholed into two broad categories—person and thing—is itself the problem because there are entities that are more than things but less than persons.
