Daily Times

Corporations, despite not being individual human beings, are legal persons and have the same rights and responsibilities as all persons do. A corporation can own property and can sue or be sued, can exercise human rights against real individuals and can themselves be responsible for human rights violations. Corporations can be convicted of criminal offenses. However, with all the rights mentioned, they are not considered living entities the way humans are.

Corporations have been given far more rights than animals and in certain cases they enjoy even more rights than human beings. Animals and nature, on the other hand, are still treated like things. Nature is misused, littered, bought and sold as property without anyone caring about its interest.

It wasn’t long ago that humans were treated like ‘things’, something that could be bought and sold on the market. Black slaves in Colonial America were valued against crops, oxens, pigs and chickens. They were deprived of basic human rights and were in most cases treated even worse than a house pet. Today,we detest slavery and do not miss out on an opportunity to speak against it and the idea in the western world to keep someone as a slave is as repulsive as it can get.

The idea of slavery is an abomination and abhorrent. The definition of a ‘person’ has changed for the betterment and it includes all races, ethnicities as well as people of different mental and physical capacities.  Since times are ever changing and as humans were once considered as a commodity that could be bought and sold on the market, should animals and inanimate objects be granted with the rights to make decisions and sue the caretakers on their behalf? Obviously someone would have to act on their behalf (as next of friends) since, they lack the ability to be able to speak and write.

Lawsuits could be filed in the name of the animal or the inanimate object about to be spayed, neutered, confined, euthanized, despoiled, defaced or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where the injury is the subject of collective public outrage or in the ‘animal’s case’, taking into account the circumstances of the particular animal. There could be a consensus held and keeping abreast the contemporary public concern for the particular animal or the ecological balance for protecting the rights.

Obviously a distinction would have to be made between the different species of animals. The laws would have to be continuously promulgated according to the varying circumstance of the animals and the nature in consideration. Varied species of animals differ when it comes to their intelligence. Chimpanzees are the closest to human beings and should be granted a status much higher than an ‘ant.’ A small pond in the middle of a jungle will have less of a legal value as a ‘river’ or a ‘tree’ that has a close connection with the people living in the adjoining territories.

Lawsuits could be filed in the name of the animal or the inanimate object about to be spayed, neutered, confined, euthanised, despoiled, defaced or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where the injury is the subject of collective public outrage or in the ‘animal’s case’, taking into account the circumstances of the particular animal

Recently, the New Zealand parliament passed a legislation that declared the ‘Whangagui’ (Te Awa Tupa) River’ to be a ‘legal person’ with all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities that any other New Zealand resident might have. After the New Zealand decision, a court in the Northern Indian State of Uttarakhand ruled that the ‘Ganges River’ and its main tributary, the ‘Yamuna River’,also deserved the same legal status as human beings.

In English Common Law, a person who is detained or held in custody could file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. To be brought in front of a judge to determine if he or she is being held unjustly. By definition, only a legal ‘person’ can petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Don’t animals and nature have a ‘physical body’ to make use of the rights granted to human beings? Certain animals are intelligent beyond imagination and can make spur of the moment decisions. There have been many instances where dogs, cats, horses and other animals at home have saved the lives of human beings they live with. Shouldn’t these animals be granted legal rights and the ability to live according to their intellectual abilities?

If a corporation, which is a non-living entity, can be provided with the same legal status as a natural person, and in certain cases even more, why can’t animals and nature be provided with the same rights? With the changing times, as slavery is no longer sanctified and is considered as an abomination, it’s only a matter of time that the same rules and regulations will apply to animals’ and nature’s collective rights.

The writer is a corporate lawyer and an alumnus of SOAS, University of London. He can be reached at sami@samishahpartners.com

Published in Daily Times, January 17^th 2018.