But I think the boring answer here is that we sometimes need legal abstractions. If they don't exist, Microsoft is no longer a distinct entity; it's 200,000 people who for some reason talk to each other, and you can't really audit their finances, punish them collectively, or set any ground rules that apply specifically to their joint activities.

This obviously has negative externalities, because while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison... but trying to approach it differently would be about as fun as modeling a CPU as a bunch of transistors.

IANASL (i am not a shipping lawyer)

Historically and practically speaking, I get the impression that the boat stuff seems the least controversial and makes the most sense. Incoherent to want to sue a river for flooding, but if a boat crashes into your house for example, then you'd like to be able to at least seize the boat without enduring the back-and-forth deflection between owners and operators.

This leads to amusing case names, like "United States v. 422 Casks of Wine" and "United States v. One Solid Gold Object in the Form of a Rooster".

Criminal and Civil liability are the two topics to focus on - you will find that non-human entities have very limited categories of crimes that apply to them. This is a key topic in the emergence of 'seemingly conscious' or 'seemingly unitary' AGI compute entities.

Also worth noting that Common Law tends to be the primary mode of law globally, even in counties that are nominally Code Napoleon (aka Civil Law) countries.

The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. A nice treatise on laws under which various animals have been tried in court.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43286/43286-h/43286-h.htm

It seems like there are judges in the US who are sympathetic to the argument that elephants are clearly persons with consciousness, desires, suffering, etc. but that the ramifications of declaring them as such would be too chaotic.

One day.

[0]: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/03/10/what-we-owe-our-...

> It’s not clear to me how a specific next friend is established - what if the god has a lot of friends?

reminded me of Pratchett's Small Gods. If you needed a random book recommendation, this is it.

If we think about applicability to AI (as the footnote suggests was on the authors mind)… I found myself thinking about the motivations and incentives that existed at the time, to understand why.

Ships - my read is that major naval powers essentially reduced the downside to owners of ships (making them responsible) while giving the owners salvage rights (“curing” the problem of a wreck which may be an impediment to the passage). That seems to make sense if you put your “I’m a shipowner” hat on. Balanced by the governments also saying if your ship sunk and someone else recovers it, they get some cut bc hey, you didn’t recover it.

And the others seem largely about modern governments appeasing religious and indigenous groups. And it’s interesting that this acknowledgement seems to be part of a broader solution (Trust, ongoing governance etc)

The first seems more financially motivated (capping downside and clearing shipwrecks). The latter seems more about protecting a natural resource/asset.

So then you think about who is leading AI and what their incentives may be… Convenient that we do have modern companies that limit liability, do you just use that structure (as they are) or do they seek to go further and say this Agent or LLM is its own thing, as as a company I’m not responsible for it.

maybe that is convenient for the companies, and the gov in the countries leading the charge…? Looks more like ships than rivers..?

The two types of persons do not have the same rights and obligations and they can not commit the same crimes.

Something like this...

> The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.). If the operation fails, the doctor receives no payment, regardless of the effort or expense incurred.

https://rsehgallaw.com/2024/06/30/why-producers-set-up-singl...

The law cannot take a concept and add "legal" to it, to expand its definition. it should simply define a new term that has no relationship with the former.

Instead of updating laws to adapt to entities that require legislation, they instead chose to expand the meaning of what a person is, so that the protections of a person also applies to that entity, but not always. What a twisted and crooked thing the law is sometimes.

A law that contradicts reality or logic is invalid. But we don't follow laws because of their validity, so that is irrelevant. Except for the problem of the legal system's legitimacy, and the public's trust in it.

If a corporation, a ship or some other entity requires legal protections or if legal responsibilities should be placed on it, specific law should be passed to that effect.

I don't need to go on about the cancerous effect corporate personhood has had in the US in recent years to make a point, but the root cause is legislative laziness. If there are 100000 laws that involve a person, lawmakers are obliged to review every single one of them, determine which ones apply to a company and update those laws, or pass new ones as applicable.

For example, there is no reason for corporations being allowed to participate in politics (US), because they don't get to vote and the government derives its powers explicitly from individuals. But the crooked and twisted nature of the law is such that the lazy expansionism of the term "person" created this gray area where corporations can benefit from personhood but avoid its obligations since they're only a "legal" person. It leaves lots of room for interpretation, reverting governance to the whims of individual rulers (judges) instead of the rule of law. And that way, the law commits suicide.

It seems like they've afforded a river all the rights and privileges of a person with none of the responsibilities, duties, or obligations.

I'm not trying to drag religion into this, despite my obviously doing so on the surface.

I am trying to see where certain flexibilities might be found, since there seems to be some flexibility on personhood in law.

Another interesting case with ships is the Trieste and several other Russian oligarch mega yachts being held in Italy. Italian law requires them to maintain the value of frozen assets, so they are spending millions per month to keep these yachts maintained.

This is just legal fiction, technology developed and applied cross industry.

The mere concept of water rights implies obligations must lie someplace. All this talk about reified gods takes away much of how mundane the concept is.

Does that mean I can sue it for flooding my property?

But not to be conflated with rovers or wanderers!

Unexpected indeed, interesting!

Unlikely, given that the Greek alphabet didn’t exist in 900 BCE.

If someone drowns in the river, can the river be convicted of murder?

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.26396

(joke)

So if the Whanganui river floods well beyond its expected banks and ruins my property, can I sue it?

We might as well call it 'subjecthood'. Corporate personhood means a corporation can be the subject of a legal dispute or action. Trivially, corporations have basically no personal rights. All the 'cases', in which corporations have been 'found' to have human rights is because a corporation is made up of people who retain their natural rights no matter how they associate. Corporations are never treated as actual living beings. Are people actually this daft.

Anyway, I'd be surprised if AI didn't gain some kind of legal status with some kind of limited personhood, if corporations and ships can be.

> the legal rights of the divine most often come up when land is contested between different faiths and sects (Hindus and Muslims, the Maori and Industry).

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

Really? Businesses and governments can be legal entities, and legal entities need not be people.

In case of Hindu deities, temples have properties, just like how the Crown has properties in England. A temple property is usually managed by a Trust, but the property is considered to belong to the deity.

Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people. You can think of it as code reuse.

There is also the argument that corporations are groups of people. A way for people to organize activities under a system of laws. Which is mostly true.