This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

Video Credit By Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker on Publish Date April 23, 2014.

Op-Docs

By CHRIS HEGEDUS and D. A. PENNEBAKER

How does a thing become a person? In December 2013, the lawyer Steven Wise showed the world how, with a little legal jujitsu, an animal can transition from a thing without rights to a person with legal protections. This Op-Doc video follows Mr. Wise on his path to filing the first-ever lawsuits in the United States demanding limited “personhood” rights for certain animals, on behalf of four captive chimpanzees in New York State.

Mr. Wise (who is also the subject of The New York Times Magazine’s cover story this Sunday) has spent more than 30 years developing his strategy for attaining animal personhood rights. After he started…