Comments on: Persons

By: Elephant Habeas: The NhRP's Colorado Case Is Dismissed | Letters Blogatory

Elephant Habeas: The NhRP's Colorado Case Is Dismissed | Letters Blogatory — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 01:50:09 +0000

[…] I have an archive of posts on animal rights cases, including the NhRP’s hapless litigation campaign, and if you’re interested in posts where I spell out my thoughts on the whole thing, you might be interested in reading Happy’s Hapless Helpers and “Persons.” […]

By: Elephant Habeas: New York's High Court Rejects "Elephants Are Persons" Nonsense - Folkman LLC

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 10:01:08 +0000

[…] Many people have pointed out that the law treats corporations as legal persons as a kind of “gotcha.” What kind of a monster would say that a corporation is a person but an elephant is not? The court’s main answer to this is exactly right: “Corporations are simply legal constructs through which human beings act.” I’ve written about this point at greater length and encourage you to check out my post from 2018 on personhood. […]

By: Michelle Etlin

Michelle Etlin — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 00:11:22 +0000

Fortunately or unfortunately I don’t read or write Twit, so I won’t get into the twitter-war issue except to say it was refreshing that nobody used all caps or said “SAD.”
But it is said that I have “a story for everything” and perhaps I do. I have two stories today: one for “who/what is a person?” and one for animals’ constitutional rights.
1. Who or what is a person? A mother in Iowa in the early 1990s was taking part in the process of a divorce and had custody of her two-year-old daughter. Both parents worked full-time and the child was in day-care. When the child displayed signs of having been sexually molested, the mom suspected someone at the day-care, and took her daughter to the hospital, where it was determined that the child had physical evidence (pretty much unassailable medical proof) of sexual abuse. The investigation took place and the parties went to court etc., and it turned out that the injury was repeated, but not at day-care (the child had been taken out of that day-care and placed in another) upon the return of the child to the mother’s house after being at the father’s house. Long story short, the Child Protective Services, following the lead of the judge and the guardian ad litem, changed its finding from “founded” to “unfounded” and the mom brought an appeal of the determination.
That appeal was dismissed because the agency argued that the clause that provided that “a person named in the report” could appeal, but they did not consider the mother “a person” for that purpose. She could not have been more horrified by anything a court could do, other than by what it ultimately DID do: take custody away from the non-offending parent. Activists never stopped talking about that case, and about the one-sentence dismissal of the appeal brought by a mother who was something other than a person.
Just about the same year, I was looking for a constitutional lawyer to represent a 13-year-old child who wanted the right to determine which parent he would live with. An attorney I knew told me the Professor of Constitutional law he knew, and studied under, was Gary Francione at U/Penn. I contacted Mr. Francione who was not interested in the case. A few weeks after that contact, Mr. Francione was in the news: He represented a dog (a German Shepherd I believe) who had been convicted of biting a human and had been actually sentenced to two years (HUMAN YEARS!) in a prison. Mr. Francione apparently was able to free the dog, and his family welcomed him home, noting joyfully, “He remembers us!” The TV news report of it was one of those quick feel-good pieces with a romping pet and his successful litigant human companions. But of course I railed against this show of ultimate justice. That dog was living in an environment in which dozens of lonely prisoners, supervised by guards, had a couple of years’ company with an animal who had no actual idea of what “prison” was. He was fed and cared for (and after all, wouldn’t distinguish between a “nice home” and a prison. He couldn’t feel any “loss of freedom” because he had not really HAD freedom; he had gone from a “pack” consisting of a middle class family in a suburban home to a “pack” consisting of incarcerated humans in a secure facility. Meanwhile the 13-year-old boy was very much aware of, and uncomfortable with, his circumstances, having been placed in a home he distinctly disliked and prevented from choosing his own “freedom.” Plus, the boy was deprived of his dog, who was not allowed to travel to his new home with him.
You can see, with stories like this, why it’s a good thing I don’t tweet. That, plus I’m technologically unable to figure it out. SAD.

By: Ted Folkman

Ted Folkman — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 18:18:01 +0000

In reply to Linda Monk.

Thanks for responding. I’m not entirely sure what you think I’ve misrepresented with the use of quotes. So that there is no confusion, my use of quotes with “What a hypocrite!” is meant, as I think is clear from context, as a summation of your point, not a direct quote of your tweets or Karen’s tweets.

You are correct that much of what I have written is directed more at Karen’s tweets than at yours, since she is the one who has taken me to task for failing to see the light about elephants. I’ve tried to explain my reasons for rejecting her view.

In your second point, I see your assertion that it is hypocritical to say that a corporation may be a legal person but an elephant cannot be, but I don’t see a response to my claims that there is no inconsistency.

By: Linda Monk

Linda Monk — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:19:33 +0000

Ted, you’ve conflated so many of the points from our Twitter exchange, it’s hard for me to know where to begin. First, let me say that I object to your use of direct quotations on supposedly joint statements by Karen Hinton and me. My quotes stand on their own, and in no way do her views represent mine or mine hers. We share agreement on a couple of discrete points that you raised on Twitter. Facts matter to me, on Twitter and elsewhere, but perhaps I should be forgiven for holding a fellow HLS grad to the same standard. You mention that cred on your website, so I assumed it was relevant to you.

I repeat here the two distinct points I raised:

1. A legal person is not the same thing as a human being under the 14th Amendment; corporations are the classic example. You argued that corps are associations of people, so that’s why they have many of the same rights. I pointed out that people do not have limited liability, which corporations do, and so that’s why they should receive less protection under the 14th Amendment. See Winkler, “We the Corporations.”

2. If a corporation has legal personhood under the 14th, then why should not elephants (or other nonhumans) be considered? I do not argue that elephants *are* legal persons, any more than I believe corporations should be regarded as legal persons, but I do believe in consistency where the law is required. That is why I see your argument as hypocritical (my word choice, not Karen Hinton’s). Procedurally, I tend to agree with you on the intricacies of habeas, and I know nothing about Wise or his arguments, but you made some categorical statements on Twitter that were incorrect factually and legally. To me that matters. Perhaps to you it’s just a way to be provocative and gin up interest in your blog.

Of course, it’s a fool’s errand to engage with a blogger on Twitter, as the danger is they will just misrepresent what you say to create their own straw man in a blog post. You have expanded your initial tweets into an entire series of arguments that are irrelevant to my tweets, about issues I did not raise. Fine, you get to shoot fish in your own barrel.

I do acknowledge that like you I am not expert on hedge funds, so I do not know if an LLC can in fact be a “partner” under the law. However, my point that limited liability is what separates a corporation from other human “persons” under the 14th Amendment remains.