¹ See e.g., Stucki, Saskia, Grundrechte für Tiere 175 (2016).Google Scholar

² See generally Steven M Wise, Hardly a Revolution—The Eligibility of Nonhuman Animals for Dignity-Rights in a Liberal Democracy, 22 Vt L. Rev. 793 (1998).Google Scholar

³ Steven Wise endorses this understanding of slavery as well. See id. Older examples include, for instance, the Oxford jurisprudence professor Thomas Holland, who wrote that slaves are things, being “Objects of Rights and Duties.” See Holland, Thomas Erskine, The Elements of Jurisprudence 68 (1880).Google Scholar

⁴ See generally Iwai, Katsuhito, Persons, Things and Corporations: The Corporate Personality Controversy and Comparative Corporate Governance, 47 Am. J. Comp. L. 583 (1999).Google Scholar

⁵ Some moral philosophers have proposed different classifications. For Peter Singer, sentience is sufficient for ultimate value, but he reserves the label “person” for self-conscious rational beings. See Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics (1993).Google Scholar

⁶ Gaius, Institutiones or Institutes of Roman Law (Edward Poste trans., 4th ed., 1904).Google Scholar

⁷ See especially Duff, P.W., Personality in Roman Private Law 6–25 (1938).Google Scholar

⁸ See, for instance, Christopher Gill, Personhood and Personality: The Four-Personae Theory in Cicero, De Officiis I, in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy: Volume VI 169 (1988).Google Scholar

⁹ The law of persons is mainly addressed in Book I, the law of things in Book II, and the law of actions in Book IV. Gaius, supra note 6.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Ernst Holthöfer and Johanna M Baboukis, Doneau, Hugues, in The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History (Katz, Stanley N. ed., 2009). Doneau was not the first humanist jurist; he was preceded by several scholars who would start systematizing Roman law in a critical manner. See Stein, Peter, Systematization of Private Law in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, in Entwicklung der Methodenlehre in Rechtswissenschaft und Philosophie vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert 122–3 (Jan Schröder ed., 1998).Google Scholar

¹¹ Christian Hattenhauer, “Der Mensch Als Solcher Rechtsfähig”—Von Der Person Zur Rechtsperson, in Der Mensch als Person und Rechtsperson 44–46 (Eckart Klein & Christoph Menke eds., 2011).Google Scholar

¹² Id. at 47–9.Google Scholar

¹³ NE Simmonds, Grotius and Pufendorf, in A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy 210 (Steven Nadler ed., 2002).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Hugo Grotius, The Jurisprudence of Holland 15 (R.W. Lee trans., 1926). See also JR Trahan, The Distinction between Persons and Things: An Historical Perspective, 1 J. Civil L. Stud. 9, 12–13 (2008). One should note, however, that Grotius did not use the Latin derivative persoon but rather the word mensch—archaic for mens, “human being”—in the Dutch original. The Dutch original reads as follows: “Wat het eerste belangt, om ‘t selve welt te verstaen, alsoo ‘t recht bestaet tusschen de menschen, dien het recht toe-komt, ende tusschen de zaecken, daer over het recht streckt, zoo state eerst te handelen van de rechtelicke gestaltenisse der menschen, ende daer nae der zaecken.” Hugo de Groot, Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche rechts-geleerdheid 6 (2d ed., 1910).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Wieacker, Franz, A History of Private law in Europe 199–278 (1995) for a thorough exposition of the legal scholarship of this era.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Robert Berkowitz, The Gift of Science. Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition 17 (2005).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Sechste Reihe, Erster Band 189 (2nd ed., 1990). English translation from Latin in Alberto Artosi, Leibniz: Logico-Philosophical Puzzles in the Law, in Philosophical Questions and Perplexing Cases in the Law xxv (Bernardo Pieri & Giovanni Sartor eds., 2013).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Leibniz, supra note 17, at 189.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Berkowitz, supra note 16, at 57.Google Scholar

²⁰ Id. at 56–57.Google Scholar

²¹ “Sofern man fragt, wer gegen wen? fragt man nach dem Subjekt des Rechts und der Verpflichtung, sofern man fragt: auf was? nach dem Objekt des Rechts, und sofern man fragt: aus welchem Grund? nach der causa.” Peter König, Das System des Rechts und die Lehre von den Fiktionen bei Leibniz, in Entwicklung der Methodenlehre in Rechtswissenschaft und Philosophie vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert 156 (Jan Schröder ed., 1998).Google Scholar

²² Klaus Luig, Die Privatrechtsordnung im Rechtssystem von Leibniz, in Grund- und Freiheitsrechte von der ständischen zur spätbürgerlichen Gesellschaft 356 (Günter Birtsch ed., 1987).Google Scholar

²³ Certain contemporary authors do make some mention of actions. For instance, Tomasz Pietrzykowski maintains that this is “the standard conceptual framework of the legal thinking, which, from Roman times, has divided reality principally into three categories: persons, things and actions.” Tomasz Pietrzykowski, Law, Personhood and the Discontents of Juridical Humanism, in New Approaches to the Personhood in Law 13, 16 (Tomasz Pietrzykowski & Brunello Stancioli eds., 2016).Google Scholar

²⁴ See generally Metzger, Ernest, Actions, in A Companion to Justinian's Institutes 208 (Ernest Metzger ed., 1997).Google Scholar

²⁵ Procedural law is naturally of central interest to lawyers and judges, but it does not have to do with construing an “inventory” of the non-legal world.Google Scholar

²⁶ Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:435 (Mary Gregor trans., 1998). See also Korsgaard, Christine M., Kantian Ethics, Animals, and the Law, 33 Legal, Oxford J. Stud. 629 (2013).Google Scholar

²⁷ Id. at 631.Google Scholar

²⁸ Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Elements of Justice. Part I of the Metaphysics of Morals xxxi (1797).Google Scholar

²⁹ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right § 36 (1820). One should note that the German word Recht can denote both “a right” and “law.” Rechtsfähigkeit can be translated as “capacity for right(s)” or “legal capacity.”Google Scholar

³⁰ Id. at § 40. (emphasis in original, word in brackets by translator).Google Scholar

³¹ Id. at § 44.Google Scholar

³² Id. Google Scholar

³³ See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History (2001).Google Scholar

³⁴ The first appearance of the term Rechtssubjekt—or its 19^th century spelling Rechtssubject—in the text corpus Deutsches Textarchiv is in Savigny's System. Yves Charles Zarka claims that Leibniz was the first to use the phrase subjectum iuris (“subject of law”). Yet, Leibniz's use of the phrase was different from the use of it since Savigny, as becomes apparent from the example employed by Zarka: Deus est subjectum juris summi in omnia, that is, “God is the subject of supreme law over all things.” Yves Charles Zarka, The Invention of the Subject of the Law, 7 British J., for the Hist. Phil. 245, 258–9 (1999).Google Scholar

³⁵ Michael Hoeflich, Roman and Civil Law and the Development of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century 11–12 (1997).Google Scholar

³⁶ John Austin, Province of Jurisprudence Determined xvi (1832). (emphasis in original)Google Scholar

³⁷ Id. at xvi ff.Google Scholar

³⁸ John Austin, Lectures on Jurisprudence: Or, the Philosophy of Positive Law, vol I 348 (1885). I am not certain why Austin claims that civilians would have taken only right-holding to be constitutive of personhood; Wolff and Thibaut, for instance, clearly define persons as the subjects of rights and duties/liabilities (Verbindlichkeiten). Anton Thibaut, System des Pandektenrechts 140–41 (1803). The Prussian Civil Code of course defined personhood in terms of right-holding, as noted above. (emphasis in original)Google Scholar

³⁹ Austin, supra note 38, at 358. (emphasis in original)Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Regarding the influence of the German personhood theories in the Nordic countries, see Lars Björne, Brytningstiden: den nordiska rättsvetenskapens historia. Del II, 1815-1870, 349–65 (1998).Google Scholar

⁴¹ See generally Visa AJ Kurki, Why Things Can Hold Rights, in Legal Personality: Animals, Artificial Intelligence and the Unborn (Visa AJ Kurki & Tomasz Pietrzykowski eds., 2017).Google Scholar

⁴² For contemporary interest theories, see Kramer, Matthew, Rights without Trimmings, in A Debate over Rights. Philosophical Enquiries (Matthew H Kramer, NE Simmonds & Hillel Steiner eds., 1998) and Joseph Raz, On the Nature of Rights, in Mind 194 (1984). For will theories, see Simmonds, Nigel, Rights at the Cutting Edge, in A Debate over Rights. Philosophical Enquiries (Matthew H Kramer, NE Simmonds and Hillel Steiner eds., 1998) and Carl Wellman, Real Rights (1995).Google Scholar

⁴³ See Trahan, supra note 14, at 11.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ “By Person is meant whatever in any respect is regarded as the subject of a right: by Thing, on the other hand, is denoted whatever is opposed to person.” Anton Thibaut, An Introduction to the Study of Jurisprudence § 101 (Nathaniel Lindley trans., 1885), cited in Trahan, supra note 14 at 15. According to Hegel, a thing in its “general sense” was “everything external to my freedom, including even my body and my life.” G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right 71 (Wood, Allen W. ed., H.B. Nisbet trans., 1991).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Trahan, supra note 14, at 11.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Gaius, supra note 6, at § 14.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Id. at § 13.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Jeffrey Nesteruk, Persons, Property and the Corporation: a Proposal for a New Paradigm, 39 DePaul L. Rev. 543, 543 (1990).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch [BGB] [Civil Code], § 90a.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ For instance, Section XXVIII of the South Carolina Slave Code of 1740 penalized the willful killing of slaves: And whereas cruelty is not only highly unbecoming of those who profess themselves Christians, but is odious in the eyes of all men who have any sense of virtue or humanity; therefore to restrain and prevent barbarity being exercised toward slaves, Be it enacted, That if any person or persons whosoever, shall willfully murder his own slave, or the slave of another person, every such person shall upon conviction thereof, forfeit and pay the sum of £700 current money.Google Scholar

Such a protection would constitute rights according to the interest theory.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See id. at X. See also Pietrzykowski, Tomasz & Stancioli, Brunello, Introduction: Modern Challenges to the Concept of a Person in Law, in New Approaches to the Personhood in Law 7 (Tomasz Pietrzykowski & Brunello Stancioli eds., 2016) (“In other words, one may be either a subject of a party of legal relations (a person) or merely their object (a thing).”).Google Scholar

⁵² Hegel was rather famous for insisting that all rights pertain to things. See Hegel, supra note 29, at 71. See also Stucki, supra note 1, at 176.Google Scholar

⁵³ See generally A Debate over Rights. Philosophical Enquiries (Matthew H Kramer, NE Simmonds & Hillel Steiner, 1998). I am here talking of rights and duties as Hohfeldian legal positions, for example, as outcomes of legal interpretation. There are of course some alternative accounts of rights. According to Joseph Raz, rights are reasons to set someone under a legal duty. Regardless, they pertain to duties and hence to actions and forbearances. Raz, supra note 42.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ I use the word “act” here, rather than “action,” to underscore that I'm not referring to the Gaian category of actions.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ John Austin was likely the first to use the compass metaphor. Austin, supra note 38 at 874 and 973. See also Finnis, John, Natural Law and Natural Rights 201 (2011): Lawyers frequently talk about rights, not as three-term relations between two persons and an act of a certain type, but as two-term relations between persons and one subject-matter or (in a broad sense) thing: for example, someone's right to £10 under a contract, or to (a share in) a specified estate, or to the performing rights of an opera.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The exception is of course corporations, which can be bought and sold, though not really stolen, in a literal sense.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Immaterial property is, however, not physical in nature.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld presented his scheme in Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Legal Reasoning, 23 Yale L. J. 16 (1913).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See generally Honoré, Anthony M., Ownership, in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (A.G. Guest ed., 1961).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See e.g., Wise, Steven M., Legal Personhood and the Nonhuman Rights Project, 17 Anim. L. (2010).Google Scholar

⁶¹ I would like to thank Toni Selkälä for this example. Slavery as a legal institution has disappeared, but de facto slavery likely still exists. See Bales, Kevin, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (2012).Google Scholar

⁶² Strings of numbers can of course constitute immaterial property.Google Scholar

⁶³ See e.g., Iwai, supra note 4, at 593.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Thomas D Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law 1619-1860 (1996).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ David Favre, Living Property: a New Status for Animals Within the Legal System, 93 Marquette L. Rev. 1021 (2010).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Id. Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See generally Wahlberg, Birgitta, Pro bono publico? En studie om fjäderfäns välbefinnande och tillsynsmyndighetens befogenheter i relation till livsmedelssäkerhetoch folkhälsa, 144 Tidskrift utgiven av Juridiska föreningen i Finland 1 (2008).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See also Emberland, Marius, The Human Rights of Companies: Exploring the Structure of ECHR Protection (2006); David Jason Karp, Responsibility for Human Rights: Transnational Corporations in Imperfect States (2014) and Peter Oliver, Companies and Their Fundamental Rights: A Comparative Perspective, 64 Int'l & Comp. L. Q. 661 (2015).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ BGB, supra note 49.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Tiere [werden] rechtlich also statt als Sachen wie Sachen behandelt. Saskia Stucki, Rechtstheoretische Reflexionen zur Begründung eines tierlichen Rechtssubjekts, Developments and Perspectives in the 21st Century, in Animal Law—Tier und Recht 146 (Margot Michel, Daniela Kühne & Julia Hänni eds., 2012).Google Scholar

⁷¹ Tomasz Pietrzykowski, The Idea of Non-personal Subjects of Law, in Legal Personhood: Animals, Artificial Intelligence and the Unborn (Visa A.J. Kurki & Tomasz Pietrzykowski eds., 2017).Google Scholar