Core Materials
Personhood Initiatives - Video (27:48 mins)
Institutions for Future generations - Video (31:47)
Optional reading
Legal personhood and the positive rights of animals (30 min) (esp. Sections 4.4, 5)
Cass Sunstein, “Standing for Animals,” Chicago Unbound, Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper No. 06 (1999).
Longtermism and Animal Advocacy (15 mins)
Research - All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations (5 mins. - 2hr.)
Defending the Future: Intergenerational Equity in Climate Litigation, 32 Geo. Envtl. L. Rev. 569 (2020).
Discussion Questions
Effective Altruists tend to think in terms of interests and trade-offs rather than a fixed set of legal rights. The law does the opposite -- how might a rights framework better promote welfare than it does currently?
What are the principal philosophical theories justifying the classes of people who enjoy legal rights today?
What practical considerations go into granting legal rights? To what extent do rights-holders need to be able to communicate their interests to have their rights represented?
When rights-holders can’t communicate their interests at all, who gets to represent them? On what basis? Under what circumstances?
Who poses the biggest threat to unrepresented interests? When does it make sense to sue them? Under what theories?