Should trees have rights? What is their legal status? If non-humans, like corporations and animals, have a variety of legal…
Should trees have rights? What is their legal status?If non-humans, like corporations and animals, have a variety of legal rights, shouldn’t trees also be offered similar protectionary rights? The law has changed and matured over time, but trees seem to be left behind. Why?
In this influential work, Christopher Stone argues that special guardians be empowered to speak for the “voiceless” elements in nature, in effect, to give legal standing in the court of law to endangered species and threatened forests.
Stone showed how the law has progressed over time to confer rights upon persons or entities that society previously had considered incapable or unworthy of having rights.
Children, slaves, women, Native Americans, racial minorities, aliens, fetuses, endangered species—all have been the beneficiaries of this drive to give legal voice and legal rights to those who once lacked both voice and rights. So, too, argued Stone, has the law recognized corporations and other entities as having legal rights. It was not always so…