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This is philosophical drivel that has only the effect of making politicians seem like they care about the environment. The notions of harm or injustice with re

This is philosophical drivel that has only the effect of making politicians seem like they care about the environment. The notions of harm or injustice with respect to the environment are all socially constructed human values we imbue them with. If I dump waste in the river, the river or its creatures aren't going to march into court and demand justice, people will. They will say they are acting on behalf of the interests of the river, its ecosystem, or its living things, but rivers are unthinking geographical features and the animals aren't choosing these advocates. You don't need to engage in such theatrics to protect the environment.

Apocryphon 8y ago
Sometimes it takes theatrics to get people to care enough about a resource, especially when it is a commons.
disordinary 8y ago
It's also an acknowledgement that the anglo-saxon way of law is not the only way.
- wahern 8y ago
  I'm not quite sure what your premise is: whether giving a river personhood is novel or not novel in Anglo law. But FWIW granting inanimate things a legal personality (with rights and even duties!) has a long history not only in English Common Law but also the Western legal tradition back to the Ancient Greeks.[1] I doubt the practice is confined to the Western legal tradition as it has immense practical utility and is an obvious hack to most any legal system. [1] See, e.g., Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences, 70 North Carolina Law Review 1231, 1239 (1992) (https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3447&context=nclr https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...)
  - disordinary 8y ago
    The article goes into detail about how the river is a living thing in Maori culture.
    - pyuser583 8y ago
      Being granted a legal status under an Anglo Saxon legal code that is frequently granted to banks, charities, and governments.
      - disordinary 8y ago
        Sure, but that is only a convenience the concept is that the river has it's own identity comes from local tradition. The law was recommended by the Waitangi tribunal which is a body that redresses historical grievances by Iwi. Not only is the river now it's own entity which is not owned by anyone local Iwi received $80 million from the government and a $30 million dollar fund to improve the health of the river.
bluGill 8y ago
If I dump "waste" in the river I will argue on behalf of the river in court that the fish are invaders and my "waste" is an antibiotic killing those invaders. It is just as valid as anything else. That the river is valued for the fish and plants is a human construct.
- chris1993 8y ago
  Would you argue that slavery is valid since freedom from slavery and other human rights are human constructs?
  - bluGill 8y ago
    I note by the downvotes on my original post several people cannot understand the concept of "devils advocate". Philosophers have debated questions like this for years, and have far more powerful arguments (on both sides) than I do. I suggest you look them up if you are really interested. I have concluded that slavery should be legal, but there is a catch: all slaves must agree to become a slave while in their right mind. I can't imagine someone agreeing to become a slave, but if someone does I don't have a problem with it. (Note that depression, drunkenness, children, and kidnapping are some of the more obvious ways to get a slave that I have ruled out)
jhbadger 8y ago
On the other hand, is it any different than the legal fiction in the US that says that Google and Microsoft are "people" themselves rather than businesses that employ people?
- gonational 8y ago
  Probably not, but I think a pretty vast number of people would agree that these sorts of corporate legal fictions should also not exist. Giving a corporation personhood does not give the corporation rights as much as does take away rights from those who interact with that corporation.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Arguably, you can't destroy corporate personhood without doing a lot of damage to capitalism itself. One problem that corporate personhood was meant to solve was that owning part of a business becomes a legally risky thing when the business isn't a separate person from its owners. Incorporation creates a legal firewall that, for example, allows me to own stock in Apple without having to fear that I will get personally sued if they do something wrong, or that someone will be able to go after my personal assets if they go bankrupt. It also makes it easier for me to interact with the corporation in certain ways - for example, if I have a grievance against something Apple did, I can name a single, easy to identify entity in my lawsuit, rather than having to pursue a case against a whole slew of individuals. The latter would be a prohibitively difficult effort, since you'd have to figure out exactly which individual are responsible in order to name them in the lawsuit, and then deal with a whole bunch of additional litigation in order to allocate liability among all the people involved in whatever thing it is you're suing them about. There is still a question of exactly what rights and responsibilities a corporate person should get. Many legal jurisdictions, including the United States, have historically been very liberal in granting natural rights to corporations, and there's plenty of room to argue that they've gone too far. But I don't think there's much room for arguing against the idea that at least some aspects of corporate personhood actually work out to the benefit of people who interact with corporations.
    - 8y ago
yayr 8y ago
democracy started also as a quite philosophical debate back in those days...
justinator 8y ago
Beats nothing.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Does it, though, if it helps cement stuff like Citizens United? (I'm well aware that New Zealand is a different country, so it doesn't set a legal precedent. It does set a cultural and moral one, however.)
egypturnash 8y ago
The river now has a lot of rights that it previously did not. This will create a lot of really interesting legal possibilities. Compare with what personhood has done for corporations - classing political donations as "free speech" has been an avenue for them to get around limits intended to make it harder to buy politicians. We speak metaphorically about how corporations rape the land. Can this river now sue corporations who dump garbage into it for raping it? Probably not if there's a legal definition of what "rape" is. But maybe charges of "assault" are possible. The article notes that which rights a body of water has have yet to be determined. That's going to be some interesting times.
- yesco 8y ago
  You know I've always thought that rivers deserved the right to privacy /s
- pyuser583 8y ago
  If I own a house adjacent to the river, and the river floods my property, can I sue the river?
  - egypturnash 8y ago
    If you built on a floodplain then there may be an argument that you are trespassing on land that rightly belongs to the river. The river’s wanderings built that land and I doubt you or anyone who previously owned that property ever negotiated with the river for it. And I am saying this as someone in the middle of moving to New Orleans, a place humanity has been fighting with a river over for three centuries now. Someday the Mississippi will assert its claim forcefully. And New Orleanians will probably just shrug and either build up houses that sit next to canals instead of streets, or learn to grow gills. New Venice or New Atlantis.
    - khawkins 8y ago
      You speak like an authoritarian, giddy at the thought of having nearly limitless capacity for activist judges to wield the justice system according to their whims. Nearly every piece of land on the planet is within the basin of a regional river. We have regulations and laws so that people know what is okay and what isn't. Our understanding of what has significant impacts on rivers and what doesn't changes frequently. Our notions of what a "significant impact" is on the river change with cultural norms. But under your system, activists merely need to seek the most sympathetic judge and punish nearly anyone they please in a kangaroo court. We have plenty of laws which punish environmental damage, regulations that provide a standard of care to avoid damage, and systems for enacting new laws and regulations. Use those systems if you want to protect the environment.
bunderbunder 8y ago
> This is philosophical drivel that has only the effect of making politicians seem like they care about the environment. That, or it's a clever hack that that brings many existing aspects of the legal system to bear in interesting ways. For example, I'm guessing that the river being a legal person would imply that it cannot be owned, neither in whole nor in part, by any other person. It sounds like the law also provides for some other things that legal persons typically have, such as a panel of one or more humans to serve as its representative. And that panel of humans would probably then have the ability to do things like pursue litigation on its behalf. Note that this isn't a particularly new hack, either. Basically the same thing has been done with things that are even more nebulous than a river, such as trusts and corporations, for centuries. The most unprecedented aspect is the idea that you could use this bit of semantic sleight-of-hand for a purpose other than making money.
- empath75 8y ago
  Corporations are legal persons and owned by people.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Yeah, fair point. I should have said "was meant to imply" instead. That's certainly at least what a lot of people in the article seemed to be pushing for.
roywiggins 8y ago
Legal fictions that carry the force of law are very distinctly not legal drivel. Children have rights, though those rights pretty much all have to be modulated through someone who is either their parent or acting as their parent. Children can't march into court and demand justice when they are harmed, but you can 1) sue on behalf of a child, 2) take a child into the care of the state and 3) prosecute someone who harms the child. They're legal people, though all of their rights are contingent on other people acting within the legal system to enforce them.
lancewiggs 8y ago
This was about Maori settlements, not politicians. The Maori, under the Treaty of Waitangi, own the rivers, and the Crown (NZ Government) stole that right away from them. (This is all in the article). The river's personhood is a compromise between the status quo and giving the land back. (and it's a marvellous region and river, that deserves to be left alone)

Apocryphon 8y ago

Sometimes it takes theatrics to get people to care enough about a resource, especially when it is a commons.

disordinary 8y ago

It's also an acknowledgement that the anglo-saxon way of law is not the only way.

wahern 8y ago
I'm not quite sure what your premise is: whether giving a river personhood is novel or not novel in Anglo law. But FWIW granting inanimate things a legal personality (with rights and even duties!) has a long history not only in English Common Law but also the Western legal tradition back to the Ancient Greeks.[1] I doubt the practice is confined to the Western legal tradition as it has immense practical utility and is an obvious hack to most any legal system. [1] See, e.g., Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences, 70 North Carolina Law Review 1231, 1239 (1992) (https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3447&context=nclr https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...)
- disordinary 8y ago
  The article goes into detail about how the river is a living thing in Maori culture.
  - pyuser583 8y ago
    Being granted a legal status under an Anglo Saxon legal code that is frequently granted to banks, charities, and governments.
    - disordinary 8y ago
      Sure, but that is only a convenience the concept is that the river has it's own identity comes from local tradition. The law was recommended by the Waitangi tribunal which is a body that redresses historical grievances by Iwi. Not only is the river now it's own entity which is not owned by anyone local Iwi received $80 million from the government and a $30 million dollar fund to improve the health of the river.

bluGill 8y ago

If I dump "waste" in the river I will argue on behalf of the river in court that the fish are invaders and my "waste" is an antibiotic killing those invaders. It is just as valid as anything else. That the river is valued for the fish and plants is a human construct.

chris1993 8y ago
Would you argue that slavery is valid since freedom from slavery and other human rights are human constructs?
- bluGill 8y ago
  I note by the downvotes on my original post several people cannot understand the concept of "devils advocate". Philosophers have debated questions like this for years, and have far more powerful arguments (on both sides) than I do. I suggest you look them up if you are really interested. I have concluded that slavery should be legal, but there is a catch: all slaves must agree to become a slave while in their right mind. I can't imagine someone agreeing to become a slave, but if someone does I don't have a problem with it. (Note that depression, drunkenness, children, and kidnapping are some of the more obvious ways to get a slave that I have ruled out)

jhbadger 8y ago

On the other hand, is it any different than the legal fiction in the US that says that Google and Microsoft are "people" themselves rather than businesses that employ people?

gonational 8y ago
Probably not, but I think a pretty vast number of people would agree that these sorts of corporate legal fictions should also not exist. Giving a corporation personhood does not give the corporation rights as much as does take away rights from those who interact with that corporation.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Arguably, you can't destroy corporate personhood without doing a lot of damage to capitalism itself. One problem that corporate personhood was meant to solve was that owning part of a business becomes a legally risky thing when the business isn't a separate person from its owners. Incorporation creates a legal firewall that, for example, allows me to own stock in Apple without having to fear that I will get personally sued if they do something wrong, or that someone will be able to go after my personal assets if they go bankrupt. It also makes it easier for me to interact with the corporation in certain ways - for example, if I have a grievance against something Apple did, I can name a single, easy to identify entity in my lawsuit, rather than having to pursue a case against a whole slew of individuals. The latter would be a prohibitively difficult effort, since you'd have to figure out exactly which individual are responsible in order to name them in the lawsuit, and then deal with a whole bunch of additional litigation in order to allocate liability among all the people involved in whatever thing it is you're suing them about. There is still a question of exactly what rights and responsibilities a corporate person should get. Many legal jurisdictions, including the United States, have historically been very liberal in granting natural rights to corporations, and there's plenty of room to argue that they've gone too far. But I don't think there's much room for arguing against the idea that at least some aspects of corporate personhood actually work out to the benefit of people who interact with corporations.
  - 8y ago

yayr 8y ago

democracy started also as a quite philosophical debate back in those days...

justinator 8y ago

Beats nothing.

int_19h 8y ago
Does it, though, if it helps cement stuff like Citizens United? (I'm well aware that New Zealand is a different country, so it doesn't set a legal precedent. It does set a cultural and moral one, however.)

egypturnash 8y ago

The river now has a lot of rights that it previously did not. This will create a lot of really interesting legal possibilities. Compare with what personhood has done for corporations - classing political donations as "free speech" has been an avenue for them to get around limits intended to make it harder to buy politicians. We speak metaphorically about how corporations rape the land. Can this river now sue corporations who dump garbage into it for raping it? Probably not if there's a legal definition of what "rape" is. But maybe charges of "assault" are possible. The article notes that which rights a body of water has have yet to be determined. That's going to be some interesting times.

yesco 8y ago
You know I've always thought that rivers deserved the right to privacy /s
pyuser583 8y ago
If I own a house adjacent to the river, and the river floods my property, can I sue the river?
- egypturnash 8y ago
  If you built on a floodplain then there may be an argument that you are trespassing on land that rightly belongs to the river. The river’s wanderings built that land and I doubt you or anyone who previously owned that property ever negotiated with the river for it. And I am saying this as someone in the middle of moving to New Orleans, a place humanity has been fighting with a river over for three centuries now. Someday the Mississippi will assert its claim forcefully. And New Orleanians will probably just shrug and either build up houses that sit next to canals instead of streets, or learn to grow gills. New Venice or New Atlantis.
  - khawkins 8y ago
    You speak like an authoritarian, giddy at the thought of having nearly limitless capacity for activist judges to wield the justice system according to their whims. Nearly every piece of land on the planet is within the basin of a regional river. We have regulations and laws so that people know what is okay and what isn't. Our understanding of what has significant impacts on rivers and what doesn't changes frequently. Our notions of what a "significant impact" is on the river change with cultural norms. But under your system, activists merely need to seek the most sympathetic judge and punish nearly anyone they please in a kangaroo court. We have plenty of laws which punish environmental damage, regulations that provide a standard of care to avoid damage, and systems for enacting new laws and regulations. Use those systems if you want to protect the environment.

bunderbunder 8y ago

> This is philosophical drivel that has only the effect of making politicians seem like they care about the environment. That, or it's a clever hack that that brings many existing aspects of the legal system to bear in interesting ways. For example, I'm guessing that the river being a legal person would imply that it cannot be owned, neither in whole nor in part, by any other person. It sounds like the law also provides for some other things that legal persons typically have, such as a panel of one or more humans to serve as its representative. And that panel of humans would probably then have the ability to do things like pursue litigation on its behalf. Note that this isn't a particularly new hack, either. Basically the same thing has been done with things that are even more nebulous than a river, such as trusts and corporations, for centuries. The most unprecedented aspect is the idea that you could use this bit of semantic sleight-of-hand for a purpose other than making money.

empath75 8y ago
Corporations are legal persons and owned by people.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Yeah, fair point. I should have said "was meant to imply" instead. That's certainly at least what a lot of people in the article seemed to be pushing for.

roywiggins 8y ago

Legal fictions that carry the force of law are very distinctly not legal drivel. Children have rights, though those rights pretty much all have to be modulated through someone who is either their parent or acting as their parent. Children can't march into court and demand justice when they are harmed, but you can 1) sue on behalf of a child, 2) take a child into the care of the state and 3) prosecute someone who harms the child. They're legal people, though all of their rights are contingent on other people acting within the legal system to enforce them.

lancewiggs 8y ago

This was about Maori settlements, not politicians. The Maori, under the Treaty of Waitangi, own the rivers, and the Crown (NZ Government) stole that right away from them. (This is all in the article). The river's personhood is a compromise between the status quo and giving the land back. (and it's a marvellous region and river, that deserves to be left alone)