Personhood

This morning I encountered a sidebar discussion called The Rights of Things in the Laphams Quartterly called Rule of Law.  It reviewed 10 situations in which the rights of "things" were debated, either through theoretical articles or actual law suits.

The 10 things were: Artificial Intelligence, the Whanganui River, frozen embryos, apes, trees, corporations, cetaceans, a monkey selfie, autonomous cars, and zombies.

A few thoughts.

Obviously, those that involved lawsuits for "things" that were not human, the monkey selfie, apes, cetaceans, the Whanganui River, and the frozen embryos, were filed on behalf of those things by humans in an attempt to acquire rights for those things. 

In the case of the river, a New Zealand court granted legal personhood thereby giving the river recognized rights as to how it is used, or abused, and which led to other rivers receiving personhood as well, something I did not know.

The rights of Great apes were first recognized, also in New Zealand in 1999, and in Spain in 2008.  A number of lawsuits aimed to protect specific cetaceans, and the entire class as a whole have been unsuccessful in the United States.  The monkey selfie was ruled to be "owned" by neither the monkey or the human who owned the camera used by the monkey.

The bit on trees was from a comment by a legal scholar who believed that trees might be an example of a natural object that could be recognized as having legally protected interests, an opinion reflected in the fact that there is a white oak tree in Athens, Georgia that, legend claims has ownership of itself, and for which that status is recognized by the local government, not state or federal, however.

In the case of the frozen embryos, Louisiana, in 1999,  designated that ex utero embryos are "judicial persons" that can sue and be sued.  When a group attempted to sue, on behalf of the embryos, the woman from whom the embryos were harvested because she decided not to use them (decided to destroy them, in other words), the courts ruled against the group, but only because the embryos had been created in California, and were therefor citizens of that state.

The paragraphs on AI, zombies and autonomous cars were comments by legal theorists on the possibility that some types of rights or personhood may eventually be granted to these "thing". For AI, perhaps some form of First Amendment protection, for autonomous cars, a legal recognition as nonhuman entities so they might carry insurance like human drivers, and for zombies a similar designation, perhaps suspended personhood, which might protect and hold them to certain legal obligations,

And then there is the corporation.

First, it seems to be the ultimate expression of arrogance by humans that, while granting rights or personhood to "things" that God created, such as rivers, apes, cetaceans, and trees, most likely seems ludicrous to a majority of people, granting the same rights to a man made entity, the corporation, doesn't provoke the same befuddlement. 

The idea that the corporation can hold property, enter into contracts, sue and be sued seems almost second nature, even though if you think about it for a second, you realize that the idea that one can divert responsibility for ones actions to an entity created out of nothing seems much more ridiculous than a monkey owning a picture of itself.  Why then do we accept this fact as obvious, even indisputable?  First, it might surprise you to know (it surprised me) that the Supreme Court established in 1886 that corporations are protected under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.  (To refresh your memory, the 14th Amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the Civil War.) 

I know it is fashionable to pretend to know what the founders were thinking when they created those wonderful documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and its Amendments so I won't engage in such speculation.  I feel very certain that this amendment was conceptualized in the smoke filled rooms of the super rich of the late 19th century who required a legal way to continue to amass their fortunes, a legal way, set in what one might call the stone of our democracy, the Constitution.  In essence, an iron clad way for rich people to protect their wealth and property.  And, even more insidious, to protect them from their greed and incompetence when the corporation fails or engages in illegal acts. 

Wow, what a coup!

And, of course, we come to the 2010 Citizens United decision which, based on the precedent that corporations have legal rights, rules that restrictions on campaign spending is a violation of the first amendment, freedom of speech.

The coup de grace!!

I am not sure how I feel about granting personhood to animals or rivers.  Clearly, it seems that we need some type of legal protection for the various entities on planet Earth, and the planet itself, due to the rampant greed that has created an entire legal cottage industry whereupon mankind uses and abuses whatever is necessary to make a profit.  If we assume our planet, our universe was made by the Creator, and that all the inhabitants, human as well as animal, the plants, the land itself, then one would think that it follows that we would revere the scope and breadth of this creation and not need laws to prevent us from spewing harmful vapors into the atmosphere and garbage into the oceans. 

Perhaps, some day, as we evolve to truly understand the gift that She has given us, we might consider such times when the existence of the Environmental Protection Agency was even necessary, yet alone assailed by its purported administrator and his president, as a time of great barbarism and backwardness.
For now, I applaud all those idealists who fight for legal protections of our fellow inhabitants on Earth, and our environment, who file lawsuits on behalf of the life all around us who do not have access to and representation within our legal system, and I vehemently disagree with those who expect me to accept the current state of the law of the land that has granted personhood to the corporation, an entity that can be created merely with a piece of paper and a signature.