The Rights of Apes, and Duties of Government Officials

It's official:  what differentiates us from chimpanzees is not our intelligence, our ability to deal with the abstract, or our ability to tell jokes. According to the decision of a five-member New York state appellate panel yesterday, "Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions. In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights ... that have been afforded to human beings."

In short, rights depend on duties, responsibilities, and accountability. That's pretty much what government ethicists have been saying. The right to run for and hold public office, the right to get a government contract, grant, or permit, the right to lobby government officials, even the right to be a citizen, all these rights come with duties. Without those duties, there are no rights.

This is especially true of legislative immunity, the non-individual right of legislators not to be tried outside their body. This right does not override legislators' fiduciary duty to citizens not to put their personal interests, or the personal interests of those close to them, ahead of the public interest. This is why legislative immunity should not apply to government ethics matters, and these matters should be handled outside the legislature, by a government ethics program.

Like rights, these duties are central to our democratic form of government. As the appellate panel says in the decision, "[T]he ascription of rights has historically been connected with the imposition of societal obligations and duties. Reciprocity between rights and responsibilities stems from principles of social contract, which inspired the ideals of freedom and democracy at the core of our system of government."

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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