Hacker News Reader

Comment by disordinary | Hacker News Reader

It's also an acknowledgement that the anglo-saxon way of law is not the only way.

I'm not quite sure what your premise is: whether giving a river personhood is novel or not novel in Anglo law. But FWIW granting inanimate things a legal personality (with rights and even duties!) has a long history not only in English Common Law but also the Western legal tradition back to the Ancient Greeks.[1] I doubt the practice is confined to the Western legal tradition as it has immense practical utility and is an obvious hack to most any legal system.

[1] See, e.g., Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences, 70 North Carolina Law Review 1231, 1239 (1992) (https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...)

The article goes into detail about how the river is a living thing in Maori culture.

Being granted a legal status under an Anglo Saxon legal code that is frequently granted to banks, charities, and governments.

Sure, but that is only a convenience the concept is that the river has it's own identity comes from local tradition.

The law was recommended by the Waitangi tribunal which is a body that redresses historical grievances by Iwi.

Not only is the river now it's own entity which is not owned by anyone local Iwi received $80 million from the government and a $30 million dollar fund to improve the health of the river.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com