Reading response - Essay Example

Reading Response: “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects” Although the issue itself may seem as somewhat comical at first glance, the issue of seeking to delineate rights for natural and inanimate objects is a fundamental question that many environmentalists and legal scholars entertain. Rather than merely being born out of a desire to see a greater level of environmental appreciation within the system, the push towards seeking to provide some basis of legal rights for natural objects necessarily is born out of the understanding that without such legal protection, these natural objects which have for so long been taken for granted could soon ceased to exist and most certainly have whatever extent rights that they do enjoy removed as a result of human exploitation, overuse, or general disregard.

Within Christopher Stone’s article entitled, “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”, the author presents the case for why natural objects should be given a degree of legal protection. Secondly, the understanding is presented to the reader that although such a series of steps may seem as a departure from logic and/or reason, the fact that matter is that a degree of legal rights for an animate objects has existed for decades within the developed world. As the author explains, this is a result of the fact that corporations and even certain types of municipalities Garner a degree of legal protection, it seems as foolish and rather uninformed that the natural objects which truly stand to disappear from the world entirely an impact upon the lives and quality of life of untold billions, should not have any form of legal protection.

With regards to the actual response of this reader to the information presented, it must be stated that although I was initially doubtful of the way in which such legal protection should be granted and provided to an animate/natural objects, the argument that the author lays out present its a convincing case for why such legal protection should be granted and maintained.