Nature And Non People Stone Summary

Stone says, “Standing…is the authority of someone to initiate an action. The term in its narrower common use is probably limited to the right of nongovernmental parties to institute judicial review, which will be our principal focus” (35). Writing with an audience of environmentalists and environmental lawyers in mind, he argues to put Nature in the plaintiff’s seat and allow all of nature – animal, vegetable, and mineral – to have legal standing in order to claim rights on their own behalf. Historically, the judiciary accepted only complaints where human beings could stake claim to violation of rights, on their own behalf as well as for non-humans and other property either owned or affected (injured) by as a citizen. In the case of Nature and non-humans Stone says this is a mistake linked to the three elements necessary for establishing standing. Namely, that citizens and organizations cannot suffer injury-in-fact which thus means there can be no causal link to an injury nor any injury that requires redress.

Is there not potential for Nature and non-humans to stand on their own in reflection on our own history of uneven legal standing, and in light of corporate standing? Resisting any dreamy subtext for non-human rights and pushing up against anthropomorphic affinities of the law, Stone says the unthinkable happens all the time. He writes, “Throughout legal history, each successive extension of rights to some new entity has been …a bit unthinkable” (2). Sometimes juridical unthinkables happen that we would, and do fault, as was the Dred Scott decision. Rights are not human guarantees whether recorded in law or not. Violations of law are not always findable or prosecutable. So where does this standing for humans meet up with