A Tree That Owns Itself (2018)
thetreeographer.com
thetreeographer.com
Imho, it's persisted in Athens, GA lore because of the idea's memetic virality rather than legal validity.
In other words, people find the idea of a beloved tree that owns itself just and right, and so do what they can legally and simply play along when legal possibilities are insufficient. Effectively, the tree wins a cultural victory.
The idea also resonates with two major themes in southern heritage and culture, now that I'm looking at this from an older pespective: quasi-religious responsibility to the land and an ethical struggle with slavery of intelligent beings.
The first is fairly self explanatory, in the Teddy Roosevelt-esque mold of being stewards of nature, while using its bounty.
The latter... post-Reconstruction southern culture has a complicated relationship with the idea of slavery in broader form, for obvious reasons, and manifesting in myriad ways (healthy and unhealthy).
So the idea of a living being (undeniably) beloved by its owner (undeniably) being granted freedom from ownership on the owner's death... is about the only just and moral tale you can tell with respect to a tradition of slavery (leaving aside the inconvenient "it took until the owner's death" timing). Note the legend sourcing back to ~40 years pre-Civil War (1820s), although obviously maintained post- as well.
I'm not one to pull current hot button topics into tortured historical analogies, but here I think it's apt.
The concrete idea of a tree owning itself is dumb.
And yet, the people of Athens, GA and visitors want to believe in a world where that's possible. And for ~200 years have acted to support that belief.
As a child, it instilled a belief in me that the legal system existed to codify our desires, not limit them, regardless of how odd they may be. Which probably wasn't the worst lesson for a young child to take away.
What about a corporation being a person?
> What about a corporation being a person?
What about a group of trees being a corporation?
The difference is that humans can articulate their preferences in ways that other humans can understand. Trees cannot (nor are we equiped to listen to what they can say).
Although the idea of a tree-owned corporation is pretty enticing.
Concepts of personhood and ownership are difficult to pin down in the context of NZ's bi-cultural society and history. Spend time sympathetically observing and you'll likely come to see everything through a kind of cultural bifocal - The western interpretation as seen in TFA constitute a legal definition of personhood and boards being established to provide a voice for Te Uruwera and the Wanganui river respectively. This might make sense to a western observer but in Maoridom the view is not so prescriptive and any attempt to cement the meaning of (what I understand as) a physical manifestation of the god that birthed mankind itself gets quite weird quite quickly.
We're yet to fully appreciate the ramifications of this approach because the legal groundwork as mentioned in TFA only really sets the stage for legal challenges - eventually case precedents will follow and they will provide clearer groundwork. My hot take is that we're already seeing major flaws with the use of boards to manifest voice and agency - They are vulnerabile to being used to advance the interests of individuals or (at best) whole tribes - These interests don't even represent a consolidated will of Maori peoples as a whole (and if such a viewpoint could ever be gathered, the jury is out).
It's fascinating to see this as a microcosm of fulfilling te tiriti, wherein the duality of interpretation of the founding legal documents of the nation - produced and signed in two different languages, neither of which actually agree with each other (BIG OOF) continue to provide wicked popcorn-fodder even today. At its core as best I can surmise: There is no accurate translation of mana or mauri to be found; all else follows.
Obviously the current law has no mechanisms to implement it and probably shouldn't, although related lawsuits would certainly be interesting.
> Although it doesn’t go as far as giving trees and other plants ownership of themselves, the Clean Water Act of 1972 in the United States effectively grants them some rights. Under the ‘natural resource damage’ provisions of the law, trees and other resources have some basic rights. It’s the government, however, that’s entrusted with protecting those rights, although any money earned through litigation must be spent on the resource itself. Essentially, the money belongs to the resource.
The fact is the human species has invaded the whole planet and acts as an occupying force imposing on every life forms its own laws, a good chunk of which only serve the purpose of supporting and sustaining the belief in property and its transmission. Even human beings are subject to property (slavery).
Did the tree give any consent to these laws?
Therefore giving them this in law is meaningless except as a legal device. Whether that's a bad use of law because it is meaningless, or a good use of law because it extends protection to things that need protecting (in our interests not theirs) is an interesting question and one I can't guess at.
In terms of legal precedent, this is not an entirely new concept. A person born with severe disabilities or entering into a vegetative state, or even murdered... All lack in the present sense (or even ever) agency and awareness. Nevertheless we have established legal rights for them. It follows that such principles might be extended further.
I am uncertain it'll prove to be a beneficial persuit, since a general maxim in the legal world is that laws cannot directly prevent harm, only dis-incentivise future instances of it. For important natural wonders, prevention is key and reparations/justice don't really make sense.
One cannot imbue awareness and agency by human fiat, which is where why my mention of a legal device comes in.
> In terms of legal precedent, this is not an entirely new concept ... such principles might be extended further
Hmm. This is a good point indeed.
Do you feel the same about corporate personhood in the US?
I'm a brit so I thought that game me a handy get-out from answering you :) but in fact we have similar over here. I have a small company comprising basically a piece of paper and a number entered in a database of UK companies. That company has some kind of personhood such that me tsaking money from it illegally apparently is in law somewhat or fully (not sure) equivalent to stealing from another person.
In answer, I guess as a legal fiction it's useful. As a reflection of reality - pieces of paper and a row in a database aren't people - it's pretty dumb. I'm ok with it as a device.