Or Bassok
The Israeli Supreme Court has presented itself as a central guardian of democracy and the rule of law. Yet, the Court's rhetoric cannot obscure the grim reality of utter lawlessness reflected in hundreds of Supreme Court decisions over the past two years regarding Palestinians in Gaza. These rulings lack the grand rhetoric and the length of the Court’s “saving democracy and the rule of law” judgments.
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Saskia Stucki
On 3 November 2016, an Argentinian judge granted habeas corpus relief to Cecilia, a person held captive in a small cage. Nothing out of the ordinary – except for the fact that Cecilia is not a battered woman or abused girl, but a chimpanzee kept at Mendoza zoo. This 1 % genetic difference turns this into a landmark judgment of potentially revolutionary proportions. For the first time in legal history, a court explicitly declared an animal other than human a legal person who possesses inherent fundamental rights. This judgment marks a radical breach with the deeply entrenched legal tradition of categorizing animals as rightless things (the person’s antithesis), and demonstrates that the previously impenetrable legal wall between humans and animals can be surmounted. The question seems no longer if, but when.
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