The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that, because elephants aren’t people, they don’t have the ability to pursue their own release from a Colorado Springs zoo, and while this creates a very intense and hard to follow ethical and legal argument, we can’t help but ask the question: What if elephants WERE people? According to an article from the Associated Press, a ruling in favor of the elephants would have allowed five elephants from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs to challenge their living conditions through legal processes in the hopes of being sent to an elephant sanctuary instead.
In its ruling, the court stated, “The question boils down to whether an elephant is a person, and because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have a standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.”
So there you have it folks: the Colorado Supreme Court’s powers of observation know no bounds. In a groundbreaking legal decision that will forever shake the very fabric of our society, the courts have ruled: elephants ain’t people.
If a career in law really comes down to being able to differentiate a four ton mammal from a human, we may just start studying for the LSAT again.
Colombia’s President Says Cocaine is No Worse Than Whiskey and Should Be Sold Like Wine.
During a live broadcast of a government meeting, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said what we were all thinking: Cocaine isn’t really that bad. Petro explained that he believed cocaine is illegal due to being made in Latin America. He said that it’s no worse than whiskey, and that allowing for the open sale of cocaine would dismantle entire drug trafficking industries. It’s an interesting idea, but we’re not so sure. For every person that we like under the influence of cocaine, we can think of five to ten people who either shouldn’t be given cocaine in the first place or should be forced to wear a muzzle when they do it, us included. In fact, some of the lowest moments in our life have probably involved cocaine to some degree, and there’s no way that our chest would ever feel normal again if we could buy it in grocery stores like wine.
How is the questions of whether elephants should be legally recognized as “people” absurd? Did the definition of absurd change in an EO like the name of the Gulf of Mexico? Under US law corporations are people. Corporations, whom SCOTUS long ago ruled should have one priority: increasing value for shareholders. Under a Constitution that still outlaws slavery (for now) ruling that a person’s sole priority is making more money for someone else sounds absurd.
Elephants are one of the most intelligent living beings on this planet. Why would a court finding them to “people” as much as Enron or Bank of America be absurd? At least if an elephant f’ed over the American people, someone would actually be held responsible.