Legal Personhood and the Rights of Nature : Beyond Anthropocentrism

This book develops a novel theory of legal personhood, providing a theoretical grounding for the Rights of Nature movement. Maintaining that natural entities such as glaciers and ecosystems are deserving of rights of their own, the Rights of Nature movement has been credited with the potential to bolster environmental protections and help halt the ongoing destruction of our planet. This book fills a gap in the literature by explicitly examining whether there are any necessary or sufficient conditions for legal personhood, and if there are any constraints on who or what can be a legal person. The book ultimately argues that there are no such constraints, which removes any need for legal persons to resemble human beings. By rejecting the connection between legal persons and humans, it becomes possible to finally move past the anthropocentrism that has so far colored nearly all aspects of international environmental law and which has held back the possibility of giving nature rights of its own. The book is intended for those interested in the legal and philosophical foundation of rights in general and how they can be used to give nature rights and personhood of its own in particular.