by Steven M. Wise (Foreword by Jane Goodall)


From "the country's best-known animal lawyer" (USA Today), a brilliant argument for extending basic legal rights to animals, beginning with chimpanzees and bonobos

While the popular animal rights movement gains ever-increasing momentum, in the courts the dark ages prevail. The evolution of law that has brought fundamental rights to the most defenseless humans has yet to begin for other species. A human lost in a permanent vegetative state enjoys a large array of legal rights. But a chimpanzee—a creature who can communicate with language, count, understand the minds of others, feel a variety of emotions, live in a complex culture, and make and use tools-has no rights at all.

Steven Wise, who has worked and communicated with the world's most prominent primatologists, demonstrates that, based on the latest scientific findings, the cognitive, emotional, and social capacities of at least chimps and bonobos entitle them to freedom from imprisonment and abuse. His path-breaking, witty, and impeccably researched book has everything needed to convince judges, scientists, lawyers, and the millions of others who simply care about animals of the injustice of denying them basic legal rights.

"An important, exciting book...The animals' Magna Carta."
—Jane Goodall

Steven M. Wise, J.D., teaches Animal Rights Law at the Harvard, Vermont, and John Marshall Law Schools, and in the words of Roger Fouts, author of Next of Kin, "is the perfect person to write this book."

A Merloyd Lawrence Book

Hardcover - 362 pages 1 edition (February 2000)
Perseus Books; ISBN: 0738200654

To see a current list of speaking dates, check here

Attorney Steven Wise, author of Rattling The Cage, and Dr. Jane Goodall gave a joint presentation to the Senior Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association. 

You can read the full text or download a copy in Adobe Acrobat format here

In good lawyerly fashion, Wise offers a wide range of arguments on behalf of animal rights. This is an impassioned, fascinating, and in many ways startling book. He gives us compelling reasons to be skeptical of any simple dichotomy between human beings and other animal and he demonstrates that the law ought to do much more than it does now to prevent animal suffering and abuse. Professor Cass Sunstein in New York Times Book Review

Rattling the Cage is a very important book in the struggle for actually attaining rights for animals. However, it is more than just a book about animal rights. It is a book about equality, liberty, freedom and justice eloquently expressed within a scientific, religious, legal, and philosophical framework. New York Law Journal