Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2017

Legal Personhood: Animals, Artificial Intelligence and the Unborn

  • Explores the concept of legal personality, drawing on legal philosophy and other traditions
  • Provides theoretical background for topical issues in medical law, animal law etc.
  • Represents a wide number of international jurisdictions, from Finland to Brazil
  • Offers a comprehensive view of an issue neglected by contemporary jurisprudence
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library (LAPS, volume 119)

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
  2. Identifying the Legal Person

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
    2. The Troublesome ‘Person’

      • Bartosz Brożek
      Pages 3-13
    3. Private Selves – An Analysis of Legal Individualism

      • Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo
      Pages 29-46
  3. Persons, Animals and Machines

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 47-47
    2. The Idea of Non-personal Subjects of Law

      • Tomasz Pietrzykowski
      Pages 49-67
    3. Animals’ Race Against the Machines

      • Rafał Michalczak
      Pages 91-101
  4. Humanity, Personhood and Bioethics

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103
    2. Person and Human Being in Bioethics and Biolaw

      • Laura Palazzani
      Pages 105-112
    3. Are Human Beings with Extreme Mental Disabilities and Animals Comparable? An Account of Personality

      • Ana Paula Barbosa-Fohrmann, Gustavo Augusto Ferreira Barreto
      Pages 127-140

About this book

This edited work collates novel contributions on contemporary topics that are related to human rights. The essays address analytic-descriptive questions, such as what legal personality actually means, and normative questions, such as who or what should be recognised as a legal person. As is well-known among jurists, the law has a special conception of personhood: corporations are persons, whereas slaves have traditionally been considered property rather than persons. This odd state of affairs has not garnered the interest of legal theorists for a while and the theory of legal personhood has been a relatively peripheral topic in jurisprudence for at least 50 years. 

As readers will see, there have recently been many developments and debates that justify a theoretical investigation of this topic. Animal rights activists have been demanding that some animals be recognized as legal persons. The field of robotics has prompted questions about driverless cars: should they be granted a limited legal personality, so that the car itself would be responsible for damages?

This book explores such concepts and touches on matters of bioethics, animal law and medical law. It includes matters of legal history and appeals to both legal scholars and philosophers, especially those with an interest in theories of law and the philosophy of law.  

Editors and Affiliations

  • Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Visa A.J. Kurki

  • Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Poland

    Tomasz Pietrzykowski

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access