An innovative scholar and groundbreaking expert on animal law, Steven M. Wise founded the Nonhuman Rights Project in 1995 and served as our president and lead attorney until his death in February 2024 from glioblastoma. Under Steve's leadership, we secured historic legal firsts for nonhuman animals, catalyzed a global debate about nonhuman rights, and reached billions of people with the message that our most cherished values and principles of justice–liberty, equality, and fairness–should be extended to nonhuman animals, too.
Steve decided to become a lawyer after developing a deep commitment to social justice as a result of his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement while an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary. He graduated from Boston University Law School in 1976 and began his legal career as a criminal defense lawyer. Several years later, Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation inspired Steve to become an animal protection lawyer.
Steve said, “It was a total epiphany. I just had never thought about what was going on out there with our treatment of animals … Then I thought to myself, well, if I’m interested in social justice, I can’t imagine beings who are being more brutalized than nonhuman animals. People could do whatever they wanted with them and were doing whatever they wanted with them. Nonhuman animals had no rights at all. I couldn’t think of any other place where my participation could do more good.”
Steve used to say that the battle for nonhuman rights, like any social justice battle, would be very long and that he didn’t expect the wall to come down during his lifetime. His goal was to begin the arduous work of punching holes in it and bringing animals through–work that others who came after him would continue. As he predicted, the wall is still standing–but, thanks to Steve’s life’s work, justice for animals has now started to gleam through the cracks. And the NhRP is steadily widening them. Thank you, Steve.
