Beehaw, what is your opinion on right of nature laws, which recognize natural entities as having "personhood" or legal rights comparable to humans?
Beehaw, what is your opinion on right of nature laws, which recognize natural entities as having "personhood" or legal rights comparable to humans?
practical examples of this, if you're curious, include the Tūtohu Whakatupua (which declared the Whanganui River and tributaries as a legal entity), the agreement around Mount Taranaki (which grants it legal personhood), and the invalidated Lake Erie Bill of Rights (passed by Toledo, OH and was designed to allow residents to bring lawsuits on behalf of Lake Erie to protect it)
Law is entirely man made and purely a concept to allow for formal processes that we agree on as necessary to maintaining an ethical society. I see no reason why we can't recognize natural entities as having legal rights. In fact, it's a pretty good idea, markedly better than deciding that corporations are people.
markedly better than deciding that corporations are people.
Came here to say exactly this. However, remember that corporations are people because it's a way for the executives to escape personal accountability and responsibility for any decision they make. Extending the same logic to nature, personhood is likely to be abused. People would do it since nature won't complain or litigate back.
I admit this analysis is off the cuff.
I think it could be helpful as a form of defense and protecting nature, but there’s the other side to the coin, which is, how do you then “hold nature accountable” for its “actions?” By that I mean natural disasters. For instance, if a mudslide occurs, how do you hold that mountain accountable? Do the victims of the mudslide then have the right to seek damages from that mountain? Could compensation come in the form of granting the victims the right to cut down all the trees on the other side of the mountain so that the timber can be harvested to compensate the victims for that natural disaster?
I think granting personhood is going to create issues from a legal standpoint and coming up with consistent precedents around agency and action. I’m not sure that this avenue of approach necessarily solves the problem at hand, which seems to be that we’re trying to prevent human beings from destroying the Earth. In that sense, it seems like the most effective and more direct response is to restrict the actions of humans rather than granting personhood to something else.
This is a very important legal tool that people have been using around the world to be able to bring suit against people and companies who cause damage to nature.
In most countries, in order to sue someone you require legal standing, which usually involves showing that you or someone or something you have control or ownership of, was caused harm by the defendant.
This status, as it's being used, specifies some set of entities who can sue on behalf of the juridical entity, for harm done to it. This greatly increases the ability of people to hold companies accountable for environmental damages.
recognize [natural] entities as having "personhood" or legal rights comparable to humans
I'm against anything but humans being granted the same rights as humans.
We can discuss what legal rights should be granted to which entities, or which entities should share some rights, but conflating different entities like humans, dogs, corporations, mountains, or AIs, as one and the same thing, is a recipe for disaster.
It sounds to me like a case of "to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
These do not grant anything human rights, they grant things the status of legal personhood, which has a very specific set of actions that an entity is legally acknowledged as being able to take, such as signing contracts and owning property, as 2 examples. They are sometimes called juridical persons.
You can't be charged with assault against a company for punching a building, or kidnapping or illegal detainment for stealing an object granted legal personhood.
It doesn't literally treat (or conflate) these things as being the same as humans.
Amending the constitution to grant rights to nature is compelling and logical from multiple perspectives, including economic ones. Nature should be regarded as essential infrastructure, the foundation upon which all other facets of society depend.
It would be a fitting testament to the challenges we face.
Isn’t there also a tree in London that owns itself?
i'm not aware of one; you might be thinking of the Athens, GA Tree That Owns Itself--but as far as i'm aware none of these types of trees are actual examples of a plant with personhood/legal rights/etc. as in the examples i gave
When you get down to it, law, society, what have you, exists for the purpose of making things better for people that could be overlooked or trampled otherwise. Granting legal personhood to nature achieves that in a number of way