A Lake in Florida Suing to Protect Itself
April 12, 2022 4:48 AM Subscribe
New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Te Uruwera forest in 2014, and to the Whanganui river and Mount Taranaki in 2017. An Indian court granted legal personhood to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in 2017, citing the Whanganui Act, and soon after Colombia awarded rights to the Atrato river.
posted by pompomtom at 5:49 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by pompomtom at 5:49 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
It would have been nice to see the word 'ecocide' in the article. There is an ongoing campaign to have it added as an International crime on par with genocide. You can follow the Stop Ecocide account for more info.
posted by vacapinta at 5:59 AM on April 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by vacapinta at 5:59 AM on April 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Best of luck, Lake Mary Jane!
Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the article, wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History and most recently, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.
posted by carrioncomfort at 6:49 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the article, wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History and most recently, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.
posted by carrioncomfort at 6:49 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
It worked for corporations.
Last night I was reading about how many First Nations viewed the spirits of rocks and trees and lakes as real, solid things, and as I was rolling that around in my head this morning the connection with corporations and nation-states clicked. They are imaginary entities to whom we ascribe thought and will, and who we use as guides for our actions.
I'm sure someone over on National Review is freaking out about this case as I type.
posted by clawsoon at 7:09 AM on April 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
Last night I was reading about how many First Nations viewed the spirits of rocks and trees and lakes as real, solid things, and as I was rolling that around in my head this morning the connection with corporations and nation-states clicked. They are imaginary entities to whom we ascribe thought and will, and who we use as guides for our actions.
I'm sure someone over on National Review is freaking out about this case as I type.
posted by clawsoon at 7:09 AM on April 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
(I presume Australia will grant legal personhood to the Great Barrier Reef just as soon as it starts exporting coal or LNG)
posted by pompomtom at 7:17 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by pompomtom at 7:17 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Isn’t there a distinction between believing that a lake should have legal rights and believing it actually has them and we can go to court on its behalf right now?
posted by Phanx at 7:28 AM on April 12, 2022
posted by Phanx at 7:28 AM on April 12, 2022
Isn’t there a distinction between believing that a lake should have legal rights and believing it actually has them and we can go to court on its behalf right now?
Same could have been said about Black persons in the United States prior to abolishing enslaving people, or children at some point in white European culture. What we, as a culture, decide as having unique and inviolate equal integrity has always been a shifting line.
posted by Silvery Fish at 7:34 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
Same could have been said about Black persons in the United States prior to abolishing enslaving people, or children at some point in white European culture. What we, as a culture, decide as having unique and inviolate equal integrity has always been a shifting line.
posted by Silvery Fish at 7:34 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
If we were really going to recognize the personhood of the lake, we would allow the lake to use its own free will to decide what it wants to do, and we would respect that decision. Maybe the lake wants to be the social and commercial center of the local area, and wants nothing more than a bunch of tacky condos to be built next to the lake to facilitate that.
Of course, the lake doesn't really want anything at all. But different people - the current owners, the local government, environmentalists, and judges - want different things. This lawsuit is about who gets to make the decisions.
This isn't 'recognizing the personhood of a lake'. This is just 'changing the owner of a lake'.
posted by Hatashran at 8:51 AM on April 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
Of course, the lake doesn't really want anything at all. But different people - the current owners, the local government, environmentalists, and judges - want different things. This lawsuit is about who gets to make the decisions.
This isn't 'recognizing the personhood of a lake'. This is just 'changing the owner of a lake'.
posted by Hatashran at 8:51 AM on April 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
"This is just 'changing the owner of a lake'." In effect, yes. From the article:
The objection that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak was, in Stone’s view, easily addressed. “Corporations cannot speak either,” he observed. “Nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities or universities.” ...
“We make decisions on behalf of, and in the purported interests of, others every day,” Stone wrote. ... He envisaged a system of guardianships by which “a friend of a natural object,” perceiving it to be endangered, could apply to a court to represent it. The guardian could try to prevent, or demand redress for, injuries that had no quantifiable human cost...
There are plenty of legal fictions. Some of them are useful. This might be. (I don't see any inherent benefit in the existence of a lake, but lakes do generally make the world a better place for the people and other animals who live on this earth, in ways that can be difficult to quantify.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:02 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
The objection that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak was, in Stone’s view, easily addressed. “Corporations cannot speak either,” he observed. “Nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities or universities.” ...
“We make decisions on behalf of, and in the purported interests of, others every day,” Stone wrote. ... He envisaged a system of guardianships by which “a friend of a natural object,” perceiving it to be endangered, could apply to a court to represent it. The guardian could try to prevent, or demand redress for, injuries that had no quantifiable human cost...
There are plenty of legal fictions. Some of them are useful. This might be. (I don't see any inherent benefit in the existence of a lake, but lakes do generally make the world a better place for the people and other animals who live on this earth, in ways that can be difficult to quantify.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:02 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
The objection that streams and forests cannot have standing
Can't have standing? What about United States v. Forty Barrels & Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola?
posted by clawsoon at 9:08 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Can't have standing? What about United States v. Forty Barrels & Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola?
posted by clawsoon at 9:08 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
"We" don't make decisions on behalf of corporations.
A corporation is a group of people making decisions on their own behalf. Those people are able to speak on their own behalf.
I certainly can't go to court and suggest that Burger King's decision to offer Coca-cola products is unreasonable, and that because they can't speak for themselves, I'd like to have guardianship over Burger King, so that my more enlightened Pepsi-related soft drink preferences are properly represented.
posted by Hatashran at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2022
A corporation is a group of people making decisions on their own behalf. Those people are able to speak on their own behalf.
I certainly can't go to court and suggest that Burger King's decision to offer Coca-cola products is unreasonable, and that because they can't speak for themselves, I'd like to have guardianship over Burger King, so that my more enlightened Pepsi-related soft drink preferences are properly represented.
posted by Hatashran at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2022
The problem is just that this legal fiction has to exist only because the courts have ruled that ecologists, preservationists, and other nature-lovers lack legal standing.
In the battle between "I'd like to destroy the ecosystem" versus "we'd prefer you didn't," currently only the former group has legal standing.
Allow for a wider definition of "interested party," and we don't have to jump through hoops about whether an elephant or a swamp can be a legal party.
posted by explosion at 10:47 AM on April 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
In the battle between "I'd like to destroy the ecosystem" versus "we'd prefer you didn't," currently only the former group has legal standing.
Allow for a wider definition of "interested party," and we don't have to jump through hoops about whether an elephant or a swamp can be a legal party.
posted by explosion at 10:47 AM on April 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
We've already gone way down the path of assigning quasi-personhood to a bunch of random shit, mostly in the service of corporate interests or expanding the police state. At the point where the cops can bring suit against the $17,000 and the Buick LeSabre they seized in a traffic stop, and you can funnel unlimited money to political groups via shell companies incorporated in Delaware (and those companies of course have the constitutional right to free speech, despite having sprung fully formed from the dank recesses of the Koch brothers less than 24 hours prior), I think we've pretty much given up on the principle that words mean things.
So sure, a lake with legal standing. Why not? Maybe it'll slow down the developer who wants to use the lake as an open sewer, at least until the case wends its way up to the Supremes and we get to read 10K words from Kavanaugh about how this particular use of noncorporeal personhood is inconsistent with what the Founders intended.
posted by Mayor West at 11:59 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
So sure, a lake with legal standing. Why not? Maybe it'll slow down the developer who wants to use the lake as an open sewer, at least until the case wends its way up to the Supremes and we get to read 10K words from Kavanaugh about how this particular use of noncorporeal personhood is inconsistent with what the Founders intended.
posted by Mayor West at 11:59 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
A corporation is a group of people making decisions on their own behalf.
I dunno. I've worked for a bunch of corporations, and it seemed like many of the decisions that people made on their own behalf weren't in the corporate interest, and decisions that they made in the interest of the corporation weren't on their own behalf.
A corporation seems to be some kind of system of incentives to action which always slightly misaligns the actions and the actors.
posted by clawsoon at 3:24 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I dunno. I've worked for a bunch of corporations, and it seemed like many of the decisions that people made on their own behalf weren't in the corporate interest, and decisions that they made in the interest of the corporation weren't on their own behalf.
A corporation seems to be some kind of system of incentives to action which always slightly misaligns the actions and the actors.
posted by clawsoon at 3:24 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yet, the Court may be at its best not in its work of handing down decrees, but at the very task that is called for: of summoning up from the human spirit the kindest and most generous and worthy ideas that abound there, giving them shape and reality and legitimacy. Witness the School Desegregation Cases which, more importantly than to integrate the schools (assuming they did), awakened us to moral needs which, when made visible, could not be denied. And so here, too, in the case of the environment, the Supreme Court may find itself in a position to award "rights" in a way that will contribute to a change in popular consciousness. It would be a modest move, to be sure, but one in furtherance of a large goal: the future of the planet as we know it.(From Should Trees Have Standing)
I really don't get how people can place so much moral authority into the Courts. They are just another product of our democratic institutions. (By "our" here, to the best of my knowledge this applies to democracies worldwide.) It just seems like lawyers high on their own supply to me. Is it the lifetime tenure that makes them so morally profound? The baroque series of elections interleaved with appointments? The Latin?
posted by Wood at 5:50 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by fairmettle at 5:46 AM on April 12, 2022 [9 favorites]