It’s hard to know what, exactly, a High Court justice in India was thinking five years ago when he came out with a rather astounding verdict on the caging of 500 birds in a Gujarat market. “It is the fundamental right of the bird,” wrote Justice M.R. Shah, “to live freely in the open sky.” Was his declaration simply an abstract philosophical flourish to further the argument that the cruel conditions in which bird traders had kept their wares constituted illegal confinement? Or was he truly intending to open a door toward an all-out ban on keeping birds in cages? Whatever his intention, the belief that birds have a right to be free seems to have picked up steam. Last May the Delhi High Court used similar language in its verdict condemning a pet store owner who had mistreated his birds. And now the Indian Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal on the original 2011 case arguing that the birds’ court-sanctioned right to fly conflicts with a more firmly established...