The Case for Legal Personhood for Rivers
“If I own a can of tomato juice and spill it in the sea so that its molecules (made radioactive, so I can check this) mingle evenly throughout the sea, do I thereby come to own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated my tomato juice?” [1]
Don’t dismiss this absurd scenario just yet. This tomato juice example is famously introduced in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia [2]. Nozick isn’t just being comedic; he’s engaging with John Locke’s Enlightenment philosophy, which asserts that by mixing labor with unclaimed natural resources, one can establish a claim to that resource. [3]
From a barebones Lockean perspective, tomato juice, as a product of labor, should grant the can opener some claim to the water. If this were true, it would mean that a negligible contribution could exclude others from a natural resource. Such a scenario makes it unclear how “enough and as good” of the capital be left for others, as required by a proviso John Locke includes. [4]
Nozick’s hypothetical reveals clear limitations in the Lockean view of property rights. It craftily poses a critical question: if a can of tomato juice doesn’t entitle me to claim a body of water as my property, what does? [5] Conversely, if it does, where is the nearest body of unclaimed water, and a grocery store that stocks Campbell’s Soup?
Remarkably, in some places in the world, rivers carry the same rights and protections as legal persons. They don’t have to worry about tomato soup in their waters, because they are recognized as natural entities with legal personhood.
Legal personhood is a vague construct that assigns legal status. In what is dubbed the Orthodox View, having legal personhood could entail three subsets: the holding of rights and duties, rights or duties, or a bundle of rights and duties, with scholars supporting each divergent subset. [6] This discussion betrays the uncertainty of assigning legal status.
According to a blog posted in GW Law Review, a river with legal personhood could potentially hold “the power to bring suit to its name, have its injuries recognized, hold polluters responsible for harms caused, claim compensation,” and other potential remedies that enforce the river’s right to flow unimpeded. [7] This requires humans to speak and act on behalf of the river, with different proposed and established models for guardianship. [8]
River personhood falls under a debated global legal framework called Rights of Nature. This framework challenges absolute human ownership over all living things, advocating instead to increase human responsibilities to nature. [9] This increases indigenous sovereignty and seeks personhood as a way of assigning rights. [10]
Rights of Nature is not only a broad philosophical framework or a legal concern, but potentially a scientific urgency. As quoted in the World Economic Forum, “enshrining rights on a global scale…is the only means by which we can achieve the profound effect that’s required to reverse climate damage.” [11]
The effort yields moderate, ongoing progress. Rivers have been recognized as legal persons differently in many jurisdictions, including Ecuador, New Zealand, the White Earth Tribe of Ojibwe in Minnesota, and India. [12] In the Indian Constitution, the right to life has been interpreted to encompass the right to water and the protection and improvement of the natural environment. [13]
In the United States and some other countries, legal personhood for non-humans is long established. Many trace the concept of legal persons for modern business corporations to the early 1600s— in particular, to the advent of the East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. [14]
Legal personhood for corporate entities allows them to “enter contracts, sue and be sued, and exist in perpetuity” which “helps drive economic growth.” [15] This promotes innovation and achieves benefits that cannot be planned ex-ante. [16]
Yet the comparison between legal personhood for corporations and for rivers is not exact. Unlike corporations, rivers cannot act autonomously or be held accountable for causing harm. There are associated complexities with granting rivers legal personhood, as personhood typically confers “the right to enter into and enforce contracts, the right to own and deal with property; and the right to sue.” [17]
River personhood is also risky. A concern holds that “the legal concept of RoN [Rights of Nature]…introduces regulatory contradictions that undermine commons management…produces unresolved legal ambiguities and undermines economic opportunities, particularly for marginalized people reliant on these resources for livelihood.” [18] Additionally, through river personhood, “authority shifts to appointed representatives who must determine and articulate the river’s interests,” potentially leading to “powerful exclusionary rights.” [19]
Despite these apprehensions, river personhood can confer many benefits to marginalized communities that are not currently represented.
Native American communities are among those who have achieved river personhood. Close to the University of Arizona, the Tribal Council of Colorado Indian River Tribes have recognized the Colorado River as holding legal personhood, authorizing the tribe to address climate change and protect ancestral values. [20] This demonstrates Rights of Nature headway in the United States.
River personhood efforts outside of Native law are more unavailing. In 2019, The Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) was a ballot initiative that attempted to grant enforceable rights to the ecosystem of the lake. [21] It would allow citizens to sue for pollution which restricted their available drinking water. [22] In Drewes Farms P’Ship v. City of Toledo, the court deemed that LEBOR violated the Fourteenth Amendment because, among other reasons, its vagueness around river personhood would lead to arbitrary enforcement of the law in due process. [23] Clarifying the scope of river personhood could help reduce legal ambiguities moving forward.
Without river personhood, legal protections for most of America’s rivers are present but remain limited. Rivers are protected through federal legislation such as the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968) and the Clean Water Act (1972). The latter sets industry standards for pollutants and waste. [24] The former, signed in by President Johnson, loosely preserves “certain rivers” for the “enjoyment of present and future generations.” [25]
Current economic approaches to mitigate environmental damage are similarly lacking. Before and after environmental damage occurs, corporations and individuals can compensate for their impact. Impact calculations include magnitude of damage, the number of individuals affected, and the associated costs; additionally, compensation can either restore the resource or provide funds to reimburse for society’s lack of access to that resource due to appropriation. [26] Even so, quantifying natural resource damages can be complicated and costly, so that “compensation is not a straightforward solution for environmental damage.” [27]
A wider issue around river personhood is creating waves right now. Water scarcity is intensifying among growing technological demands, while water resources are already highly valuable and contested. AI data centers are water-intensive, and many operate in the Global South, leaving water use open to greater exploitation. [28] If water rights go to the highest bidder, they can be over-extracted in regions with weak safeguards; as a negative externality, communities may be denied access.
Due to the current lack of river Rights of Nature, we should ponder when rivers can be removed from the realm of property. Legal personhood for rivers allows nature to gain resistance against damaging human interests, and offers advantages over existing approaches toward mitigating environmental damage.
Rivers can be recognized as limited legal persons in cases where ecological harms are difficult to calculate, irreversible, or where economic mechanisms fail to account for them.
Once granted this recognition, if anyone still wants to spread tomato juice in a river? No can-do.
References
[1] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia 174-75 (1974).
[2] Id.
[3] John Locke, Second Treatise of Government §§ 27-32 (C.B. Macpherson ed., Hackett Publ’g Co. 1980) (1690).
[4] Id. at § 27.
[5] See Nozick, supra note 1.
[6] Visa A.J. Kurki, A Theory of Legal Personhood 23-30 (2019).
[7] Monishaa Suresh, Environmental Personhood and the Rights of Rivers, GW Point Source (Mar. 17, 2023), https://blogs.gwu.edu/law-gwpointsource/2023/03/17/environmental-personhood-and-the-rights-of-rivers/.
[8] Craig M. Kauffman, Guardianship Arrangements in Rights of Nature Legal Provisions, in Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law—A Guide for Practitioners § 1 (Anthony Zelle et al. eds., Wolters Kluwer 2020), https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/7/13481/files/2022/09/Kauffman-20-Guardianship-Arrangements-in-Rights-of-Nature-Legal-Provisions.pdf.
[9] David R. Boyd, The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World 26 (2017).
[10] Id. at 26.
[11] Elizabeth Mills, Environmental Personhood: What is it and Why Should Nature be Given Legal Status?, World Economic Forum (Feb. 13, 2025), https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/02/environmental-personhood/.
[12] Francine Rochford, Environmental Personhood: New Trajectories in Law 46-48 (2024).
[13] Id. at 58.
[14] See Kurki, supra note 6, at 85-90.
[15] Purdue Glob. L. Sch., Corporate Personhood: What It Means and How It Has Evolved (Jan. 6, 2023), https://www.purduegloballawschool.edu/blog/news/corporate-personhood.
[16] Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom 161-62 (1986).
[17] Gabriel Eckstein et al., Conferring Legal Personality on the World’s Rivers: A brief Intellectual Assessment, 44 Water Int’l 1, 4-6 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2019.1631558.
[18] Srinandan Ramachandran, Rights of Nature, Wrongs for the Commons: Risks of Assigning Legal Personhood to the Rivers of Washington State, 15 Wash. J. Soc. & Env’t Just. 77, 88 (2025), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wjsej/vol15/iss2/4/.
[19] Id. at 89.
[20] Craig Kauffman et al., Colorado River Indian Tribes Resolution on Personhood for the Colorado River, Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, https://ecojurisprudence.org/initiatives/colorado-river-indian-tribes-resolution-personhood-for-the-colorado-river/.
[21] Lake Erie Bill of Rights, Toledo, Ohio, Municipal Code ch. XVII (2019), https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/toledo/latest/toledo_oh/0-0-0-158818.
[22] Nat’l Agric. L. Ctr., Turning the Tides: Judge Finds Lake Erie Bill of Rights Unconstitutional (Mar. 4, 2020), https://nationalaglawcenter.org/turning-the-tides-judge-finds-lake-erie-bill-of-rights-unconstitutional/.
[23] Drewes Farms P’ship v. City of Toledo, 441 F. Supp. 3d 551, 564-66 (N.D. Ohio 2020).
[24] U.S. Env’t Prot. Agency, Summary of the Clean Water Act (Feb. 23, 2026), https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-water-act.
[25] Nat’l Wild & Scenic Rivers Sys., About the System, https://rivers.gov/about.
[26] Pascal Gastineau & Emmanuelle Taugourdeau, Compensation for Environmental Damages, 97 Ecological Econ. 150, 150-152 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.11.008.
[27] Neil Craik, Tara Davenport & Ruth Mackenzie, Definition and Valuation of Compensable Environmental Damage, in Liability for Environmental Harm to the Global Commons 54, 61-65 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108866477.005 (referencing § 3.2.1.3).
[28] Karen Hao, Empire of AI ch. 6 (2025).