Nature Should Have a Legal Right to Exist
America’s legal system proclaims that even lifeless, human-made, paper entities called “corporations” are endowed with the human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But if an inanimate, corporate thing can have enforceable rights to legal protections and life privileges, why not natural beings like, well, nature? Not just favored animals, but all complex, living, breathing, sentient, cooperative, reproductive beings. Trees are one obvious example, or rivers, prairies, and marshes—all of which have a life of their own and a reason to exist beyond our exploitation of them.
That’s why the townspeople of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, in Quebec, Canada, have unanimously approved a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Trees, proclaiming that these beneficial and beautiful neighbors have an inherent right to exist, thrive, and enjoy the protections of law. This is the latest advance of the Rights of Nature movement, which maintains that forests, waterways, and other interconnected living beings of nature are not mere “property” of human profiteers to be poisoned, clear-cut, excavated, and otherwise destroyed. Rather, they must be regarded as full citizens of our world, with essential, legally enforceable rights of their own—especially the most basic right: the right to exist.
Corporate opponents to the Rights of Nature movement cry that the very idea is unnatural—a tree can’t even speak, so there is no way it can exercise a legal right.
Excuse me, but corporations can’t speak, either, for they are mere paper constructs. So lawyers are hired to speak for them. The same system of representation can and should apply to nature.
What’s So Supreme About Our Extremist Supreme Court?
Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four—calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one.
Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a “Supreme” Court doesn’t make it one. There’s nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-rightwing political activists who are presently soiling our people’s ideals of justice by proclaiming their own antidemocratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women’s rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule, and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on the United States that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate.
Indeed, the imperiousness of the six ruling Justices has already caused the Court’s public approval rating to plummet to around 40 percent, a historic low that ranks down there with Donald Trump’s rating, and threatens to go as low as Congress.
This has led to a flurry of officials attesting to the honesty and political impartiality of the reigning Supremes. Unfortunately for the Court, these ardent defenders were the six culprits themselves.
The “integrity of the judiciary is in my bones,” pontificated Neil Gorsuch, who now stands accused of having lied to Senators to win his lifetime appointment.
“[We are not] a bunch of partisan hacks,” wailed Amy Coney Barrett, a partisan extremist jammed onto the Court in a partisan ploy by Trump in the last few weeks of the first term of his presidency.
“Judges are not politicians,” protested John Roberts, who became Chief Justice because he was a rabid political lawyer who pushed the Supreme Court in 2000 to reject the rights of voters and install George W. Bush as President.
Remember, in America, The People are supreme! We don’t have to accept rule by an illegitimate court.