Legal Personhood for Nonhuman and Future Entities Ordering the Discourse

Abstract: Defining and allocating legal rights, and, by implication, assigning legal personhood, is one way to protect nonhuman entities (such as animals, plants, and ecosystems) and the interests of future people. This paper aims to clarify some basic issues underlying legal and legal policy debates about such protections. I shall begin with a few remarks on what legal personhood is (including a brief comparison with similar moral notions), and on two different goals when dealing with it. The bulk of the paper is devoted to three questions concerning the legal personhood of nonhuman and not yet existing entities: the analytical question, the legal question, and the legal policy question. The first one will be answered quite definitively. Since the second question can be raised for each and every legal system, my answer will be somewhat rough and more tentative. The third question will remain unanswered. Instead, I will distinguish three types of considerations that are relevant to the analysis of legal personhood policies. At the end, I shall briefly consider the role law may or may not play in determining moral status, before I conclude with a few general principles that should be observed when discussing legal personhood for entities other than living human beings.