In the United States, corporations have constitutional rights. It’s a concept known as corporate personhood, and over the years it’s been shaped by court decisions and the occasional law.
The US isn’t the only country to recognize corporate personhood. But in some other countries, citizens are using the same legal concepts to protect the environment. A recent article on Treehugger says that a New Zealand river may be the first river in the world to be granted personhood, which gives it rights and interests similar to those of a corporation.
New Zealand officials granted personhood to the Whanganui River as part of a settlement with the indigenous Whanganui River iwi. The iwi had filed several legal claims against New Zealand’s government seeking to protect the river. In a New Zealand Herald article, a government official said the iwi have pursued protections for the river since 1873. The Treehugger article says the iwi have strong cultural ties to the river.
The Treehugger article also points out that New Zealand isn’t the only country to invoke environmental personhood. Ecuador, renowned for its biodiversity and home to the Galapagos Islands, has granted rights to the environment in its constitution.
This article appears in Show Time: The Rochester Fringe Festival.
Not sure whether the author here is being simplistically coy or just obtuse. The notion of “corporate personhood,” as he probably well knows, has its 19th century legal basis in the notion that a corporation can legally sue and be sued and held accountable in court. The obligate flip side of this is that as result, corporations, like persons, have rights to contract and enforce contracts, or own property.
To pretend this is a concept that can be applied to “the environment” or a particular river is cute — cute but equivocating to the point of meaninglessness. Will litigation be allowed against the Whanganui River for drownings it perpetrated? Bumpersticker logic is like that. And leftists do love thier bumperstickerisms.