Speaker Series: Alexandra Huneeus

This paper analyzes the arguments used to advance claims of non-human rights (or rights of nature) in Latin America, the region where they first emerged and have undergone the most development. Most studies to date treat rights of nature as a single movement. A review of judgments, laws, and social movements, however, reveals that justifications for extending legal rights beyond humans fall into three categories. First are claims based on the species-level attributes of an animal or other creature: there is a quality of the being in question that demands a certain type of ethical treatment. Second are claims based on legal pluralism. Law in a multicultural state should give voice to the views of indigenous and tribal peoples as well as Western legal traditions. If indigenous or other peoples so request, states should grant legal personhood and rights to natural features or “earth beings” that non-Western peoples hold as persons, or kin, and with whom they live in relation. Third are claims based on a new ontology: Some argue that it is time to rethink the most fundamental commitments of Western thought and, specifically, to give a different moral meaning to the distinction and relation between humans and non-humans, as well as the distinction and relation between the living and non-living. Each of the three types of claims is advanced by distinct social movements and plays out in different ways in its relationship to existing laws. While the first and second can be cast as extensions of existing human rights doctrine, the third aims to radically shift our major premises but is struggling to find legal coherence. The chapter’s main contribution is to introduce a typology of nature rights and use it to analyze the relation of nature rights and human rights. Scholarship needs to consider these differences in the argumentative structure because they have implications for many of the questions that we are asking of this emerging body of law, including questions of effectiveness, implementation, and impact on other areas of law.

To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 

To read the related paper for Dr. Huneeus’s presentation, reach out to Sophie Kofman or Dianna Garzón.

Alexandra Huneeus’ scholarship focuses on international law and human rights, with emphasis on Latin America. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, Law and Social Inquiry, Yale Journal of International Law, Leiden International Law Journal, and by Cambridge University Press. She is Evjue Bascom Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received her PhD, JD and BA from University of California, Berkeley, and was a post-doc at Stanford University’s Center on Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law.

In 2017, Professor Huneeus was named to serve a ten-year term as Foreign Expert Jurist in the Colombian Jurisdicción para la Paz (JEP), a court created as part of the Colombian peace process. At UW, Professor Huneeus currently serves as Director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice. She is Co-Chair of the University of Wisconsin Human Rights Program, which she co-founded, and Director of the Global Legal Studies Program. She is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Law and Society Association. She has served on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, and of Law and Social Inquiry. Previously, she has served on the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association and the American Society for Comparative Law, and as section chair for the Midwest Political Science Association (Law and Courts) and for the ASIL Midwest Interest Group on International law.