Technically its probably still incorrect (ianal). Municipalities cannot make any local law they want. All law making authority has to be delegated to them by the provincial government. Band councils are a bit more juridsictionally complex, but i imagine this is beyond their authority too.
Municipal government making a law outside of their authority has the same effect as if you or i declared a law.
Whether or not anyone else is willing to go along with it is another matter. Making a law does not automatically compel others to accept it as their law. Indeed, those who believe in the French civil law system, which describes the majority of Quebec residents, are not likely to accept laws that are made outside of that framework.
But they might. The only thing that would try to stop it is other people, but if those other people are also on board then anything is possible.
While you are technically correct that if you overthrow the government you can make any laws you want, it seems unlikely that applies to this situation.
The government isn't something that exists off to the side. It is literally just the people. The laws in force are simply what the people choose to recognize.
Indeed, Quebec tradition ensures that most people will choose to recognize the laws crafted under the given framework and not beyond. But they can also choose to look beyond it if they so wish. Of course, they don't have to either.
Let's someone in that city punches the river and get put in jail by the local cops for battery, what do you think would happen?
I encourage you to watch Fargo Season 5 which just finished. The bad guy is basically just that, the sheriff of a small town that doesn't recognize the authority of the U.S. federal government.
Let's say someone posted explicit nude photos of Magpie on the Internet without her consent. Because CBC just did exactly that (see the link, if you're into revenge porn).
What do think will happen? The answer is nothing, because ain't nobody taking this law declaring Magpie a person seriously. You can create all the laws you want, but they don't mean anything if nobody else is willing to recognize them. Government isn't something off to the side. It's just the people.
(Or more specificly, the constitution doesn't mention municipal governments so they dont have instrinsic rights, and all their powers come from the laws creating them. They definitely do not have the power to issue letters patent or anything of the sort)
> Although the title of legal personhood is a unique way of approaching conservation, it can draw questions about how the Magpie will manage the intricacies of the legal system — especially since it can now theoretically sue and be sued.
> In the case of damage, due to flooding for instance, Cárdenas explains that the Magpie would likely not be found liable. "The river doesn't commit intentional damage, therefore it cannot be sued," she said, pointing out that those who build in known flood zones are also aware of the risks.
Intent is not a condition for successfully suing someone but realistically this entire thing is mostly a joke anyway so might as well make up the entire thing as they go.
> The Clamzorians are animists. They believe every rock and tree and river has its own spirit. And those spirits are legal people. This on its own is not unusual – even New Zealand gives rivers legal personhood. But in Clamzoria, if a flood destroys your home, you sue the river.
The creation of new personhood, the attachment of legal rights to what was previously a non-person, is a very dangerous game. It sounds in both abortion and animal rights. If a non-sentient river can be a person, why not a whale? Why not the wild animals that use this river? As living beings one would assume they were due more rights than the river.
That actually makes me wonder: how, if at all, is this different from creating a government agency or non-profit corporation or whatever, giving it ownership of the river, and chartering it to protect the river?
Such an entity would have the same "legal personhood" rights, and its leadership / officers would do pretty much the same thing as the "guardians" discussed in the article. And it avoids all the goofy questions of whether the river itself can be guilty of strict-liability offenses or liable for flooding damage or whatever.
I am not a lawyer. If an informed opinion regarding the your proposed alternative matters, hire a lawyer with expertise in such matters. On the other hand, if it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.
Instead I have some training in philosophy. It gives me some experience with slippery slope arguments, the philosophical rationales for animal rights, and some other equally useful (or useless) ideas.
But insofar as I understand the common law, persons are strictly liable for matters of strict liability and “being guilty” would require a criminal act (e.g. criminal negligence).
I dont think its a slippery slope. We've had non natural persons in law going back to the romans.
The problematic part here is, how do you determine what a river "wants". Maybe it wants to be polluted the way some humans want to smoke. Ok, maybe not, but still, it seems like this is the wrong tool for the job. Why not just use some sort of environmental easement, or pass some law making it a protected river.
There are multiple slippery slopes, some good, some bad.
It’s a slippery slope to a national park system. It’s also a slippery slope to a public-private partnership to maintain natural sites.
Both are great.
It’s also a slippery slope to a system where natural entities receives court appointed “guardians”, who sue and defend based in the interests of their client, whatever that means.
That would be a mess.
There really needs to be some sort of board, selected by parties with interests in the well-being of the river.
> In 2021, the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the regional municipal council of Minganie passed sister resolutions, granting the Magpie River the landmark right of legal personhood
Maybe i'm missing something, but surely this would require an act of either the provincial or federal legislature. Surely this is way outside of the powers of a municipal council.
That's technically a band council not a municipality. They probably have more or at least different rights than a municipality, but i still doubt they have the authority to incorporate a river.
It’s been done before (sort of): the river Vilnelė is declared to have the constitutional right to flow by everyone, in the very first article of the constitution of Užupis. [0]
This makes me wonder, how does a certificate of death work? Could a doctor declare that it does not have a heartbeat, and is therefore dead? Would that remove its person-hood, as there is no person to represent it and show life in court?
Floura and fauna pay their tax in-kind, we use their products to power the economy in lieu of currency. I disagree with the child comment saying that your comment is snarky, I think it's completely valid to look at it this way and helps to complete the systemic analysis.
Once you remove corporate personhood from corporations, there's nothing left. They can't sue, enter into contracts, be sued, or own things, making them unable to serve their intended purpose.
Ah, but you'll say, the law should recognize a distinction between humans and corporations! It does. Corporate personhood is nothing more than a way of talking about the rights, privileges, and obligations, which corporations share with humans. When push comes to shove, the fiction is dispensed with, this is called "piercing the corporate veil"[0], terminology which shows that this is understood to be reasoning by analogy.
No one said more rights; that they should have all the rights of a single citizen is contentious enough. What if, for example, we grant freedom of speech to this entity, and we take freedom of speech to include the funding of political parties, causes, or candidates? (That's how things are at present in the United States.)
Don’t they? In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014) the Supreme Court did not address and answer whether for-profit corporations are protected by the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, but the Court did recognize a for-profit corporation’s claim of religious belief (equal to the belief of its owners), sufficient for such a corporation to be exempt from a regulation that it (or its owners) religiously object to, if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law’s interest, according to the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
The question of citizens untied, ect wasnt about if corporations get more or new rights, but if the people lose rights they had before if they are part of a group.
A person can hold up a sign, but can two people hold up a sign together.
Yeah, this is the critical legal reasoning behind Citizens United, and it doesn't get enough respect from people who dislike the practical outcome of that decision. You do not surrender your rights when you join an organization. Anything that one of its employees could legally do is something that the corporation (which is, as the saying goes about government, just another term for things we agree to do together) should be able to.
It's complicated and difficult to draw the lines and impossible to do it perfectly. But if Elon Musk wants to blow an entire fortune for the lulz, that's kind of up to him. And we shouldn't stop him.
Corporations are by definition persons. The “incorporate” means to “make a body” - a legal body that can act like a natural person under the law.
Imagine if, say, the New York Times Coporation wasn’t a person.
It couldn’t own property. Or enter into contracts. So no office building, unless one of the investors had a property they cared to rent to individual officers or employees.
Coworking for everybody, basically.
Salaries would be paid from the private accounts of individual investors. As would all expenses.
If an investor ran low on funds, they would have to be replaced, quickly.
All employees would be the personal servants of the executive officer, although their contracts would make clear they must serve the organization as a whole.
Some industries can function like this.
Maritime insurance functioned without incorporation for centuries.
Even today Lloyd’s of London has some “names” which are personally liable, with no corporate veil between themselves and liability.
But businesses like the New York Times Corporation can’t operate that way.
The law already distinguishes between legal and natural people. The idea that certain groups of people become virtual people is not new. It dates back to roman times and our entire legal system is built around it.
The Canadian legal system has made no such recognition.