The left-wing media is now arguing that animals should be considered legal persons and that the “violence” of so-called “ecocide” should be a punishable offense in international law and civil and criminal codes. Writing in the far-left magazine The New Republic, Lydia Millet argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United offers the legal precedent to enact such laws.
“Both domestically and internationally, species and ecosystems need to be endowed with legal standing to give local and native stewards the tools to save them from the depredations of industry in the short term and sustain them over the long,” writes Millet. “Accountability for the violence of what some call ‘ecocide’ should be embedded in international law and civil and criminal codes.”
“Luckily, bestowing legal standing on extra-human parties isn’t a fanciful idea,” she writes. “The U.S. Supreme Court did exactly that in the 2010 case known as Citizens United, when it declared that corporations were legal persons—a decision that hobbled American democracy but also set a neat precedent for extending legal personhood to nonhuman entities. And corporations are clearly more abstract and disembodied than animals.”
A GLOBAL MOVEMENT?
Millet also points to the fact that other nations have begun classifying nature and animals as legal persons.
“In New Zealand, a river and a rainforest have been awarded personhood; the people of Ecuador, in 2008, voted to modify their Constitution to recognize the right of nature to exist and flourish; in the United States, the Yurok tribe gave personhood to the Klamath River under tribal law in 2019; and in 2010 Pittsburgh became the first major city to recognize the rights of nature. Those rights have also been enacted into law or invoked by courts in Bolivia, Panama, and India.”
What Millet fails to address is the inevitable implications of declaring animals and natural geographic features legal persons that could have catastrophic effects on human society. Were such blanket measures enacted, hunting, fishing, and farming as we know it might all become illegal. Indeed, current efforts by the Biden regime to “protect” the environment using already available means are predicted to impact energy costs dramatically and will have dire consequences for Americans’ standard of living.
Observers may also note the inherent irony of The New Republic, which appears to publish at least one article per day in favor of the “right” to abortion, arguing that animals are entitled to legal personhood protections while actual baby persons are not.
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