Personhood

The latest entry in Professor Larry Solum's "Legal Theory Lexicon" -- "Personhood" -- is particularly relevant to our project here at Mirror of Justice.  Solum opens with this:

Are the unborn human persons? What is the difference between legal and moral personhood? What does it mean to say that a corporation is a legal person? Do the most intelligent animals deserve the rights of moral or legal persons? These questions are likely to arise sooner or later for most law students. This entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon explores the idea of personhood, moral, legal, and human. As always, this post is intended as an introduction for law students (especially first-year law students) with an interest in legal theory. . . .

Solum goes on to consider, among other things, the connection between "human" and "person"; the possibility of distinguishing between "three kinds of persons--natural, moral, and legal"; the "criteria for moral personhood"; etc.  I would welcome the reactions to Solum's post of any MOJ readers who work on or are expert in questions of "moral personhood."

And, to connect the discussion to "real life", consider this story in the Chicago Tribune, "Judge Says Lost Embryo a Human" (thanks to Amy Welborn):

An aspiring mother's fertilized egg mistakenly discarded by a fertility clinic was legally a "human being," a Cook County judge ruled Friday, clearing the way for a Chicago couple to file a wrongful-death suit.

If the judge's ruling stands, experts said, it could frustrate the work of fertility clinics and the future of stem-cell research. But attorneys who disagree on the question of when life begins said the ruling likely would be overturned.

"As an anti-abortion activist, I was pleased to see the judge's initiative," said Victor Rosenblum, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. "But as a lawyer, I can't say that he is on solid ground in his reasoning."

Rick