Recently, two state legislatures—Idaho’s and Utah’s— passed statutes that preclude courts, agencies, and lawmakers from recognizing the legal personhood of nonhuman animals, nature, artificial intelligence, and inanimate objects. These “nonpersonhood statutes” are reactions to social, political, and legal efforts to expand the concept of personhood to include nature, animals, and sentient artificial consciousnesses. As social movements continue to advocate for more robust moral and legal status for various nonhuman entities, this kind of legislative backlash is virtually inevitable. Idaho’s and Utah’s nonpersonhood statutes are thus harbingers of legislative debates to come.
This Article critically analyzes the nonpersonhood statutes by situating them in their broader political, jurisprudential, and ethical contexts. It describes the social milieu in which these laws have arisen and analyzes the rationales and discursive practices of the laws’ sponsors and proponents. It argues that the nonpersonhood statutes conflict with leading jurisprudential theories of personhood, illustrating the malleability and indeterminacy of the “legal person.” The nonpersonhood statutes show how personhood is a vehicle for social, political, and moral beliefs about who should—and should not—matter before the law. These statutes demonstrate the ways in which the concept of the human person is defined in opposition to its Others: the animal, the natural, the artificial, and the material. This kind of abjection justifies the relegation of nonhuman others to the status of nonpersons, which in turn justifies, enables, and normalizes acts of violence against them.
