The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations and Robots

Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates.Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals.The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants.The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman. The Problem of Personhood reveals the unsettling consequences of granting rights to imagined persons, such as Sophia the robot citizen or New Zealand's Whanganui River.Synthesizing the political and philosophical debates on personhood and drawing on a varied cast of thinkers that includes Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Dr. Seuss, Lisa Siraganian uncovers the disturbing impact of this contemporary development.Awarding rights to robots and rivers all too easily becomes a legal tool to turn people into capital.When robot Sophia is made a citizen, "she" is transformed into a subject in the law without the corresponding legal duties that protect us from her. At th