Profiles in the Media

Below are media sources that have discussed Professor Cupp and his work in some depth, rather than briefly quoting him.

Popular Science, David Grimm, How The Rising Status Of Cats And Dogs Could Doom Biomedical Research, October 3, 2014

“A few influential legal scholars have even joined the fray. Perhaps no criticism is more damning than that coming from Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Cupp, a panelist on the “Research in the Crosshairs” session at the San Diego conference who has advised NABR, is a hugely influential force in the antipersonhood movement. He has written that equating animals with people devalues humanity. “When we allow animals into our inner circle, we erode the notion that humans are unique,” he says. “When animals are on the same plane as humans, we no longer have the moral responsibility to care for them. And when humans are on par with animals, what’s to stop us from euthanizing humans?” Legal rights, he says, are a serious business. They don’t just give us the ability to live our lives relatively unencumbered. They enter us into a contract with every other member of society, a world built on the give-and-take between human rights and human responsibilities. As he wrote in a landmark 2007 law review article, “A powerful argument may be made that granting rights to animals that do not possess moral responsibility represents a rejection of the foundation of human civilization. 

The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright, The Elephant in the Courtroom, February 28, 2022

“Judges skeptical of the. . . claims for animal personhood often cite the work of Richard L. Cupp, Jr., a scholar at Pepperdine’s law school who has written extensively about the dangers of granting legal rights to animals. Steven Wise spent much of his time before Justice Tuitt trying to discredit an amicus brief that Cupp had written on behalf of the Bronx Zoo, terming him “a deeply reactionary” academic who “dispenses junk history” and “junk jurisprudence.”

Cupp’s brief argued, in part, that “whether Happy stays with the Wildlife Conservation Society or is moved to a different location should be a matter of human responsibility . . . not a matter of pretending that Happy is a person.” If Happy or other animals are being mistreated, then legislatures have an ethical duty to aggressively enlarge laws that protect them. This position—which Cupp has called “edgy animal welfare”—holds appeal for judges who prefer to see such issues resolved through legislation. Cupp warned that granting personhood to one elephant would flood the courts with similar appeals for other animals and for broader rights. “The question is ‘How far do we go?’ ” he told me.

In the nineties, Cupp was a new arrival at Pepperdine, specializing in torts. He said, “I heard about a case in which somebody had a dog that was negligently killed, and there was an effort by the owner to seek emotional-distress damages.” The dog, a German shepherd named Bud, had been shot three times by a security guard. The matter was settled out of court, for thirty thousand dollars, and it made Cupp think about how a pet’s life should be valued. If a cow was killed, the market—not sentiment—would supply the answer. “It struck me, because I was single, and for a lot of my adult life I lived by myself, always with a dog,” he said. Cupp loved his family, but he realized that “it would influence my day-to-day life more if somebody negligently killed my dog than if they negligently killed my parents or siblings.”

 Cupp grew up in Silicon Valley, but his parents had spent their childhoods on farms in Indiana, and thought nothing of killing chickens for dinner. These days, the only living animals that most Americans encounter are pets. “Their utility is emotional, rather than economic,” Cupp says. (That is how Steven Wise got to know animals as well: to this day, he keeps on his desk a box containing the ashes of Ditto, a beloved dog who passed away in 1987.)

Scientific advances have also had a profound effect on popular attitudes. “We understand so much more now about animals’ capabilities than we did in the past—how smart they are, how much they can suffer,” Cupp told me. “As that knowledge is spreading through society, it is just naturally going to push us to say we need to value these animals more highly.”

Cupp and Wise have occasionally sparred in public debate. In 2017, they appeared on a podcast called “Lawyer 2 Lawyer.” At the time, a court in New York had just struck down appeals for two of the NhRP’s chimpanzee suits. “The only thing our arguments were based on was the fact that chimpanzees are autonomous beings,” Wise said. His preferred definition of “autonomy” is grounding one’s behavior “on some non-observable, internal cognitive process, rather than simply responding reflexively.” Any animal that met that standard should be entitled to “bodily liberty”—the right to be free and left alone in an appropriate environment, either in the wild or in a dedicated sanctuary.

“Steve says ‘autonomy,’ but notice that the animals that he is talking about are all highly intelligent,” Cupp remarked. “What about the slippery slope? How much intelligence do you have to have to be able to be autonomous?” Cupp then observed that mentally disabled and comatose people, not to mention infants, may have cognition levels below that of an intelligent animal. “If we start including in our considerations of who is a ‘person’ some sort of individual intelligence analysis, we’re going to erode our enthusiasm for the healthy degree of rights that we afford people who have severe cognitive impairments,” he said. “The real determinant of whether chimpanzees or elephants or cetaceans or any other animals are treated well or not treated well is going to be humans. . . . We need to be focused on that human responsibility.”

National Geographic, Rachel Hartigen, Q&A: Pets Are Becoming People, Legally Speaking, April 7, 2014

“One of the people I talked to was a Pepperdine University law professor named Richard Cupp. He's actually a big animal person—he has dogs that he considers members of the family—but he is very concerned about this idea of granting pets rights and considering them people in the eyes of the law.

His idea, which is shared by a number of legal advocates, is that humans are unique. Only we can have rights because rights imply responsibility and an understanding of how society works and how the law works. All of human civilization is built on us not only understanding our own rights but also understanding the rights of others. Giving animals rights completely shatters this: Not only are they not human, but we have no idea that they can even comprehend this status and these rights that we've given them.”

BBC, Almost Human Rights, December 20, 2017. Extended discussion with Professor Cupp and others regarding nonhuman legal personhood

Science Magazine Live/Science, Should Animals Have Legal Rights? Discussion of animal rights with Richard Cupp and Steven Wise, moderated by Science Magazine editor David Grimm. Dec. 8th, 2013

ABC News Online, Joyeeta Biswas, Horse's case raises an important question: What would happen if animals could sue us? August 23, 2018

“But Richard Cupp, a professor at Pepperdine University Law School, called the suit a "radical approach in sheep’s clothing."

Cupp has been a frequent critic of attempts to grant animals legal personhood and was involved as a critic in the chimpanzee trials, as well. He told ABC News that he believes Justice’s case had potential ramifications that were more extreme than appeared on the surface.

"If this suit were successful, it would be quite intuitive for someone to say, this is effectively legal personhood," Cupp said. "It could really be a radical, unmanageable change for our legal system and maybe even our economic system."

Humankind’s race towards civilization and advancement has always been heavily dependent on the use of animals, and every facet of our relationship with them may now come under question, Cupp added.

"If all of a sudden, cows or chickens became legal persons with the potential to sue if they are abused, it’s not a big step to say as legal persons, they shouldn't be eaten," Cupp said. "If you wanted to eat beef for dinner, I think there'd be a pretty good argument that it was not in the cow’s best interests." 

Resiliance.org, Joel B. Stronberg, A Horse Is a Horse of Course, Unless Given the Right to Sue 2— In Nature’s Name, Civil Notion,  August 22, 2019

“Opponents of animals being granted standing in law courts warn of slippery slopes. Richard L. Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University, fears that giving Justice and other animals their day in court would open wide courtroom doors—overrunning the courts. Cupp has been quoted as saying–

We should not fool ourselves into minimizing the implications of these lawsuits by thinking that they are, in the long run, only about the smartest animals…it’s only a start.

Once you say a horse or dog or cat can personally sue over being abused, it’s not too big a jump to say, “Well, we’re kind of establishing that they’re legal persons with that. And legal persons can’t be eaten.”   

 Atlantic, Brandon Keim, An Elephant’s Personhood on Trial, December 28, 2018, discusses Cupp’s views (along with Richard Epstein’s) as follows:

“Richard Cupp, an animal-law professor at the Pepperdine School of Law, worries that extending animal kingdom, moving from elephants and chimpanzees to common creatures—a worry echoed by Richard Epstein, a law professor at New York University, who spoke to Harvard Magazine about his concern that people might claim personhood for farm animals. “We kill millions of animals a day for food,” said Epstein. “If they have the right to bodily liberty, it’s basically rights to animals could ultimately erode our own. “Courts and society might, with this new paradigm, be tempted not only to look at more intelligent animals as being like humans,” he said in a debate with Wise, “but start to think of less intelligent humans a little more like animals. Cupp also fears opening a “floodgate of litigation” as animal advocates work their way through the a holocaust.” Rather than rights, Epstein suggests more animal-welfare protections.”

Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law, Animal Rights Law: For or Against. Interview with Richard L. Cupp, June 20, 2020, (extensive interview with Richard Cupp)

Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, One of us? Novel strategy aims at getting chimpanzees recognized as legal persons, January 15, 2014

Quoting Cupp: “Over time, I started realizing that a lot of the people pushing for noneconomic damages for pets, which I oppose as being bad for pets and bad for people, really had a bigger agenda in mind: They seemed more interested in the questions of personhood and rights status,” Cupp told JAVMA News. 

“There’s an argument that noneconomic damages could be a steppingstone toward that by convincing people to see pets are more like children. I began to see the implications of personhood and rights as the most interesting issues.”

 If you gave personhood to a chimpanzee or any other nonhuman animal, it would be a fundamental shift away from any sort of personhood that’s been extended previously.”

Cupp says he respects Wise; he just doesn’t agree with him on animal rights issues. He considers Wise’s strategy to seek a common law writ of habeas corpus for the four chimpanzees a creative approach. “Generally, governments are the entities imprisoning people, so the writ of habeas corpus action is usually against the government. But if you go back in history, there were habeas corpus lawsuits related to freeing slaves. I think that’s part of what’s going on here, and there is some precedent for habeas actions brought against nongovernmental actors,” he said. 

Because habeas corpus is a common law procedure, approval by the legislature is not needed to expand the scope of the law, according to Cupp. “The legislature can then pass a statute revoking what the judge has done, but this is an interesting way to avoid having to go through a popularly elected legislature,” he explained. “You don’t have to get a majority vote to create a statute; you just have to get the right set of judges to agree that the writ of habeas corpus applies to chimpanzees.”

As for Wise’s argument that the law already recognizes various nonhuman entities as legal persons, Cupp responds that each of those entities was created by humans to serve as legal proxies for humans. “The reason for creating corporate personhood is to serve human interests. It’s a legal fiction to more effectively manage and govern humans,” he said. “If you gave personhood to a chimpanzee or any other nonhuman animal, it would be a fundamental shift away from any sort of personhood that’s been extended previously.”

Famous Trials. Website by University of Misssouri Professor Douglas O. Linder seeking to highlight “the greatest trials in world history.”

The website seeks to include cases that have been famous, but “also have shaped history in some significant way or, alternatively, be an especially good window for observing and understanding a particular time.” The website includes “Animal Rights Trials” among its famous cases. Cupp is discussed as one of the most prominent critics of animal legal personhood. The website’s discussion of Richard Cupp’s work includes:

“Law professor Richard L. Cupp … argues that granting rights to animals would open the “floodgates” of litigation and that a far better focus for those who care for animals would be to seek more legislative protection against mistreatment of animals.”

“Richard Cupp worries that the lack of an obvious place to draw a line will lead to excessive litigation: “If the legal wall between animals and humans is broken through, [that will open] a floodgate of expansive litigation without a meaningful standard for determining how many of the billions of animals in the world are intelligent enough to merit personhood.” (Cupp brief, 22)”

“Richard Cupp makes this argument [that granting personhood to other species based on their cognitive capacities might lead to less respect for human rights and human dignity]. a central part of his amicus brief against extending rights to animals: “The pervasive view that all humans have distinctive and intrinsic human dignity regardless of their capabilities may have cultural, religious, or even instinctual foundations. Morally autonomous humans have unique natural bonds with other humans who have cognitive impairments, and thus denying rights to them also harms the interests of society—we are all in a community together. Infants’ primary identities are as humans, and adults with severe cognitive impairments’ primary identities are as humans who are other humans’ parents, siblings, children or spouse. However, good intentions sometimes create disastrous results. There should be deep concern that over a long horizon, allowing animal legal personhood based on cognitive abilities could unintentionally lead to gradual erosion of protections for these especially vulnerable humans. The sky would not immediately fall if courts started treating chimpanzees as persons. . . .But, over time, both the courts and society might be tempted not only to view the most intelligent animals more like we now view humans but also to view the least intelligent humans more like we now view animals. (Cupp brief, 14-18). 

Cupp concludes: “Deciding chimpanzees are legal persons based on the cognitive abilities we have seen in them may open a door that swings in both directions regarding rights for humans as well as for animals, and later generations may well wish we had kept it closed." (Cupp brief, 21)”

“Richard Cupp argues that because chimps should not be legally accountable, they also should not be given legal rights: “The pertinent question is not whether chimpanzees possess anything that could be characterized as a sense of responsibility, but rather whether they possess a sufficient level of moral agency to be justly held legally accountable as well as to possess legal rights under our human legal system. When, in 2012, an adult chimpanzee at the Los Angeles Zoo beat a three-month-old baby chimpanzee in the head until the baby died, doubtless no authorities seriously contemplated charging the perpetrator in criminal court." (Cupp brief, 5--6)

“Richard Cupp agrees that the focus should be on legislative change to protect animal welfare. He approves of the language of New York’s Third Department, which refused to extend personhood to Tommy in the Lavery appeal: “Our rejection of a rights paradigm for animals does not, however, leave them defenseless,” noting that advocates for animals remained "free to importune the Legislature to extend further legal protections to chimpanzees.” (Cupp brief, 25).”

https://famous-trials.com/animalrights/2595-the-case-against-animal-personhood

Seeker, Jen Viegas, Animal Advocates and Academics Seek Personhood Rights for Chimpanzees, April 20, 2018

“Richard Cupp, a professor at Pepperdine School of Law, told Seeker that he supports legal efforts to improve the welfare of animals, but said the term “animal rights” is vague.

“My experience is that many people who initially say they support 'animal rights' actually support imposing appropriate legal responsibilities on humans to prohibit mistreatment of animals, rather than supporting legal personhood and accompanying legal rights for animals," he said.

The arguments against granting animals personhood rights, he said, range from chimps lacking "a sufficient level of moral agency to be justly held legally accountable" to "the potential societal chaos" that would ensue should legal personhood be extended to nonhuman animals.

"Rejecting nonhuman animal, legal personhood does not imply being satisfied with the status quo regarding how we treat animals," Cupp said. "Society has made important advances in animal welfare in recent years, and we are probably closer to the beginning of this significant period of animal welfare, legal evolution than we are to its future high point. As a society we need to continue our evolution toward increased protection of animals, but they should not be made legal persons." 

He acknowledges that lawmakers and others need to do a better job of being explicit in statutes, ordinances, and court decisions that sentient animals are different from inanimate property. "Sentience" itself is a loaded topic, but Cupp uses the word to describe animals capable of suffering. 

His views of the issue will soon be published in the University of Cincinnati Law Review. A draft of the article is available online. As Cupp admits in the article, however, not granting chimpanzees and other animals personhood does mean that they are "still property" in the eyes of the law.