Voice

'Voice versus Rights: The First Nations Voice and the Australian Constitutional Legitimacy Crisis' by Gabrielle J Appleby, Ron Levy and Helen Whalan in (2023) 46(3) University of New South Wales Law Journal comments 

For almost three decades, Australia has been locked in a public and political debate about whether and how to ‘recognise’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution. Omnipresent in all of these debates is the complex question of sovereignty. To many First Nations people, sovereignty is at the core of what they seek. Yet such aspirations seem to clash with the assumptions of many non-Indigenous people that the Australian state’s sovereignty is ultimate and exclusive – that is, fundamental and impinged by no other sovereignties. Such constitutional disagreements set up a chronic crisis of legitimacy. In this article, we examine the foundational purposes of substantive recognition reforms, and compare the two options that have dominated in the contemporary debate: rights and Voice. Recognition through rights is predominantly an attempt to redress the historical discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and prevent its future occurrence; or at least provide an avenue of redress for that potential. But this form of recognition, while it may do some work to support First Nations sovereignty and the right of self-determination, does not speak directly to them, and nor therefore to problems of constitutional legitimacy. We argue that recognition through First Nations Voice is a proposal that, unlike rights, relies on both deliberative and democratic characteristics to address the legitimacy problems that we outline. We identify this as a key implicit reason animating calls for an institutional political Voice from First Nations themselves, as expressed in the historic exercise of self-determination that culminated in the Uluru Statement. The Voice, operating as a vehicle through which First Nations can speak directly to the Parliament, has the potential to set up a deliberative and democratic process for the gradual working through of competing legitimacy claims.

Personhood and Zoocentrism

'AI inventors: deference for legal personality without respect for innovation?' by Ernest Kenneth-Southworth and Yahong Li in (2023) 18(1) Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 58–69  comments 

 Thirty years ago, Lawrence B. Solum wrote a visionary article concerning the debate on the legal personhood of artificial intelligence (AI) and posed the following question:

Could an artificial intelligence become a legal person? As of today, this question is only theoretical.

Thirty years later, in the area of patent law, recent cases from the UK, the USA and Australia have resoundingly answered: ‘no’ to intellectual property rights (IPRs) for AI systems. While academic commentators have perhaps helped sensationalize the concept of an ‘AI inventor’, national patent offices and court judgments have taken a sober approach in opining that AI systems cannot possess or be subject to IPRs in patent law. This article argues that recent decisions, which have declined to grant IPRs to AI systems, are correct and pay deference to the requirement of legal personality, which is the foundation of law. Granting legal personhood to AI systems or machines, at least within the area of intellectual property, seems implausible. However, the article further argues that the deference given to legal personality in AI inventor cases raises the question of what impact this has on innovation. An approach that outcasts AI systems from patents may well respect the current order of legal personhood within the boundaries of most legal systems, but it may negatively impact the existing incentives for innovation provided by the IPR system. The article advocates for a reform of intellectual property laws to take into account the role of human creativity in enabling the creativity of AI systems

'Animal Rights in Colombia: A Critique from an Environmental Perspective' by Carlos Lozano in (2023) 54 Revista Derecho del Estado 345-380 comments 

Animal Rights are commonly understood as an expression of the Rights of Nature. However, one and the other are in open contradiction, due to the complex interactions of ecosystems and the place of fauna in them, poorly understood by the generators of animal law rules, since animal suffering is inherent in nature. Animal Rights in Colombia are not an expression of the Rights of Nature; on the contrary, they undermine them, and hinder the consolidation of an Environmental Law aligned with social justice that places the survival of ecosystems at the center. This is because animal law illegalizes critical ecological processes, gentrifies Environmental Law, fosters an artificial binarism between fauna and flora, contradicts certain forms of climate action, hinders conservation, stigmatizes cultural diversity, discriminates by class, impedes the control of invasive species, generates a protection deficit for other kingdoms of life, such as plants and fungi, and promotes a transition from anthropocentrism to a kind of zoocentrism.