September 13, 2026
SIG-PRG 2026-09-13
Participants: Sarah Friend | utc +2, themandalore, misha 🪨, Eric Alston (UTC - 6), LisaRöingBaer-CEST, Sam Mandel (GMT -4)
This session examined Stone's proposal to grant legal personhood/standing to natural objects such as rivers and forests. Discussion centered on whether Western law is the right vehicle for this, how damages and value get priced, the role of guardianship and "romantic" views of nature, and comparisons to corporate personhood, artworks, and landmarks. The conversation closed with speculative directions — LLMs as guardians, and Coasean bargaining at scale — plus logistics for the next reading and session.
- **Square peg / round hole (Sam Mandel):** Western law is built around individual persons and monetary damages; extending personhood from corporations to natural objects felt forced and unconvincing to Sam. He noted that a human legal subject (even one needing a guardian) still has a history and personality, and corporations plausibly develop a collective "personality," but natural features don't fit this in Western culture without a mythological/animist basis.
- **Personhood as recognition, not just standing (Lisa):** A consequence of granting personhood would be cultural — natural objects would be *recognized* as persons, not merely defendable in court. Lisa argued the group risks missing the essay's opening point: rights we now take as common sense (e.g. children's rights) once seemed unthinkable, and today's participants are "illustrating what the entry to the text says."
- **Value, ownership, and economics (themandalore):** Framed the question through economics — assigning ownership/property rights (invoking de Soto, collateralization) transforms how people interact with a thing, for good or ill. Suggested personhood here may functionally resemble another mode of ownership/representation, and compared it to cap-and-trade / carbon credits, which ascribe tradable value to something previously unpriced. Argued any such system needs an underlying shared societal goal or morality, which is where environmental disagreement lives.
- **The standing problem (Eric Alston):** A river has no "motive power" to make a claim, so the real question becomes *who* gets regulatory authority to enforce on its behalf. Eric noted many historically protected areas were protected precisely because someone sought to exploit them. His central comparative question: why grant a scientific/guardian group *legally actionable standing* rather than simply appointing them as a specialized regulatory body empowered to restrict polluting activity?
- **Limits of the civil remedy system (Eric):** Courts traditionally impose only monetary damages and are reluctant to compel behavior (injunctions, writs of mandamus); higher-level regulation belongs to legislatures/regulators. Loading environmental protection onto a damages-based civil system asks too much of it, even if the loss (a spiritually/culturally significant river) genuinely exceeds any monetary sum — echoing his tort students' frustration that "$300,000" cannot make someone "whole" after losing an arm.
- **Pricing the ineffable (Sarah Friend):** Interested in how culture puts numerical prices on things of ineffable value. Cited Stone's car-damage example: damages default to cost-of-repair, falling back to fair market value when repair is untenable — a logic that becomes strange when applied to pollution in a river.
Session Recording Summary · 62m 15s · Full notes ↗
Reading: Christopher Stone's essay "Should Trees Have Standing? — Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects" (a 1970s text; the group repeatedly refers to Stone's proposal for legal personhood/standing for natural objects). The exact title is not spoken verbatim, but the author "Stone," the era ("in the seventies"), and the argument (legal standing for rivers/forests, guardianship) clearly identify it.
This session examined Stone's proposal to grant legal personhood/standing to natural objects such as rivers and forests. Discussion centered on whether Western law is the right vehicle for this, how damages and value get priced, the role of guardianship and "romantic" views of nature, and comparisons to corporate personhood, artworks, and landmarks. The conversation closed with speculative directions — LLMs as guardians, and Coasean bargaining at scale — plus logistics for the next reading and session.
- **Square peg / round hole (Sam Mandel):** Western law is built around individual persons and monetary damages; extending personhood from corporations to natural objects felt forced and unconvincing to Sam. He noted that a human legal subject (even one needing a guardian) still has a history and personality, and corporations plausibly develop a collective "personality," but natural features don't fit this in Western culture without a mythological/animist basis.
- **Personhood as recognition, not just standing (Lisa):** A consequence of granting personhood would be cultural — natural objects would be *recognized* as persons, not merely defendable in court. Lisa argued the group risks missing the essay's opening point: rights we now take as common sense (e.g. children's rights) once seemed unthinkable, and today's participants are "illustrating what the entry to the text says."
- **Value, ownership, and economics (themandalore):** Framed the question through economics — assigning ownership/property rights (invoking de Soto, collateralization) transforms how people interact with a thing, for good or ill. Suggested personhood here may functionally resemble another mode of ownership/representation, and compared it to cap-and-trade / carbon credits, which ascribe tradable value to something previously unpriced. Argued any such system needs an underlying shared societal goal or morality, which is where environmental disagreement lives.
- **The standing problem (Eric Alston):** A river has no "motive power" to make a claim, so the real question becomes *who* gets regulatory authority to enforce on its behalf. Eric noted many historically protected areas were protected precisely because someone sought to exploit them. His central comparative question: why grant a scientific/guardian group *legally actionable standing* rather than simply appointing them as a specialized regulatory body empowered to restrict polluting activity?
- **Limits of the civil remedy system (Eric):** Courts traditionally impose only monetary damages and are reluctant to compel behavior (injunctions, writs of mandamus); higher-level regulation belongs to legislatures/regulators. Loading environmental protection onto a damages-based civil system asks too much of it, even if the loss (a spiritually/culturally significant river) genuinely exceeds any monetary sum — echoing his tort students' frustration that "$300,000" cannot make someone "whole" after losing an arm.
- **Pricing the ineffable (Sarah Friend):** Interested in how culture puts numerical prices on things of ineffable value. Cited Stone's car-damage example: damages default to cost-of-repair, falling back to fair market value when repair is untenable — a logic that becomes strange when applied to pollution in a river.
Questions & Disagreements: - **Is personhood the right vehicle at all?** Sam and Eric were skeptical, favoring regulatory/technocratic authority; Lisa was more open, seeing recognition value; Sarah said she's unsure personhood is the right framework but hopes to keep exploring it. - **Standing vs. regulation (Eric's recurring comparative question):** Why give a guardian legal *standing* rather than regulatory power? Left op
Participants: Sarah Friend | utc +2, themandalore, misha 🪨, Eric Alston (UTC - 6), LisaRöingBaer-CEST, Sam Mandel (GMT -4)