ABSTRACT
The central issue in animal litigation is standing to sue, that is, the right to bring an action. Cases range from the momentous to the trivial. In the United States the question of standing has arisen repeatedly, in relation to litigation on behalf of particular species, ecologically valuable terrain or individual animals. The Silver Spring monkeys litigation concerned cruelty to macaques held for research purposes. Legal action was instigated by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, International Primate Protective League, and the Animal Law Enforcement Association as plaintiffs but also as next friends of the monkeys. The granting of personhood to chimpanzees would open the floodgates to complex and expensive litigation. The litigation analyzed earlier is trapped between two competing different visions of law, that is, law as a mundane mode of social adjustment and law as a mode for the investigation, recognition, creation, and dissolution of deep ontologies.
