PHIL 101-04
Bennett Pearson
‘PROPOSED BRIEF BY AMICI CURIAE PHILOSOPHERS IN SUPPORT OF THE
PETITIONER- APPELLANT’
In the ‘PROPOSED BRIEF BY AMICI CURIAE PHILOSOPHERS IN SUPPORT OF
THE PETITIONER- APPELLANT’ (i.e., the Tommy and Kiko case) the authors’ aim “to
change the common-law status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere ‘things,’ which
lack the capacity to possess any legal rights, to ‘persons,’ who possess such fundamental rights
as bodily integrity and bodily liberty…” The authors’ argue that “there is a diversity of ways in
which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of
‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals.” I would reject the
appeal arguing that if I were to accept the appeal there is no clear definition of ‘persons’ or
‘personhood’ which means we would potentially have to grant personhood status to a variety of
animals. This would result in a decline in the speed of development of medical advances that
may have resulted in the saving of human lives.
The very first word in the definition of ‘person’ as defined by Merriam-Webster, the
producers of the most commonly accepted dictionary, is human. (Merriam-Webster 2020) I will
define it as the same but with a few more attributes. A ‘person’ is an individual human being
who is conscious enough to know right from wrong and has the mental capacity to process
