Visa A. J. Kurki, A Theory of Legal Personhood

Abstract

In recent times, ‘personhood questions’ come up frequently in a variety of bioethical contexts. For example, consider the classic debates such as the status of embryo and abortion, questions surrounding the status of patients in persistent vegetative state and end-of-life decision-making,1 or permissibility of the scientific experimentations on or eating of animals. Then there are the relatively newer personhood discussions around the responsibility for harms caused in Artificial Intelligence-based medical treatment, or the legal status of one’s genetic materials, or of the newly emergent entities such as organoids,2 synthetic embryos,3 and human–animal chimeras.4 While in the normative discussions, arguments based on ‘personhood’ sometimes argue for increasing legal protections, the conceptual aspects and what exactly the granting of legal personhood in these contexts entails often remain unclear. Visa AJ Kurki’s A Theory of Legal Personhood aims to ‘provide a theoretical framework for understanding legal personhood in contemporary Western legal systems’,5 to address these foundational questions. It largely succeeds in doing so. The many analytic nuances and thought-provoking claims in this work make it a rich playing field for bioethical minds to indulge.