Legal personality: a construction of the law
Every day we live alongside a legal fiction without hardly noticing it. A company can own assets, enter into contracts, be a party to legal proceedings and even be ordered to pay damages.
All of this seems perfectly normal to us. Yet a company does not breathe, does not regenerate and has no consciousness: it exists as a subject of law only because the legal system has attributed legal personality to it. This is precisely one of the peculiarities of law: legal subjectivity is not a natural quality, but a construction of the legal system.
Indeed, the law identifies the subjects to whom it attributes rights, obligations and protection. If we accept without difficulty that a legal fiction, devoid of life and consciousness, can be the holder of rights, why does it still seem so inconceivable that a forest, a river or a lagoon could be so too—living, dynamic ecosystems capable of regenerating themselves? Does this really depend on their nature, or on the way in which, for centuries, we have conceived the relationship between human beings and the natural world?
Christopher Stone’s theory
It is from this question that, in 1972, Christopher Stone’s reflection began, developed in the essay “Should Trees Have Standing?”, in which he observes that the attribution of legal personality does not stem from biological or cognitive characteristics, but from a choice made by the legal system. If the law recognises legal subjectivity in entities without a body, consciousness or the capacity to act autonomously, there is no theoretical obstacle to doing the same with elements of nature, providing that their interests be protected through a system of representation.
The most innovative aspect of Stone’s theory, however, does not lie solely in having proposed granting rights to nature. His main contribution is having shown that the subject of law is not an immutable category.
Indeed, the history of law shows that the circle of subjects to whom the legal system recognises rights has progressively expanded, reflecting the evolution of legal and social consciousness. Every expansion initially appeared as a break with the past, only to later become an integral part of the legal system. The recognition of nature as a subject of law fits into this same evolutionary dynamic.
From object to subject of law
A profound shift in perspective follows from this approach. Nature is no longer considered solely as an asset to be protected for the benefit of human utility, but as an autonomous centre for the attribution of rights. Ecosystems thus cease to be mere objects of environmental protection and become holders of their own rights, to which the legal system grants direct protection.
From this perspective, overcoming legal anthropocentrism represents a further evolution of the law, characterised by the progressive expansion of the circle of subjects to whom the legal system recognises rights and protection. The main novelty does not lie in the possibility of taking legal action to protect ecosystems, already guaranteed by environmental law, but in their recognition as holders of their own rights. The ecosystem becomes the direct holder of the rights that the legal system grants it, such as the right to exist, to maintain its own ecological balance and to be restored when these are compromised.
Its protection, therefore, is no longer based solely on the violation of human interests, but also on the violation of the rights of the ecosystem itself. This logic, moreover, is not foreign to our legal system. There are already situations in which the holder of a right does not coincide with the person who exercises it in practice: when a subject is not able to act personally, the legal system entrusts this function to a representative.
Stone’s proposal extends this scheme to ecosystems: representatives do not assert their own interest or a collective interest, but act exclusively in the name and interest of the ecosystem.
The case of the Mar Menor
For many years, Stone’s idea remained mainly a theoretical reflection. Today, however, the recognition of nature as a subject of law no longer belongs solely to academic debate.
In several legal systems this idea has found concrete application, giving rise to a new legal paradigm. Among the most significant examples is that of the Mar Menor, the largest saltwater lagoon in Europe, located in the Spanish region of Murcia.
In recent decades the Mar Menor has been affected by serious environmental degradation, mainly due to the intensification of agricultural activities and the resulting inflow of fertilisers into its waters. The continuous input of nutrients has caused an intense eutrophication process, altering the ecological balance of the lagoon, drastically reducing available oxygen and causing the death of thousands of fish and other aquatic organisms.
This crisis highlighted the limits of traditional environmental protection tools. Faced with this situation, a popular mobilisation culminating in a popular legislative initiative supported by more than 600,000 signatures led to the approval of Ley 19/2022, whereby Spain recognised legal personality for the Mar Menor and its river basin.
For the first time in Europe, an ecosystem became a subject of law. The law is not limited to symbolic recognition, but builds a true legal statute for the ecosystem.
The Mar Menor has been granted its own rights, including the right to exist, to be protected, conserved, maintained and restored, in order to safeguard its ecological processes and natural balance. To ensure its effectiveness, the law establishes a governance system made up of a Committee of Representatives, a Monitoring Commission and a Scientific Committee, tasked with representing the ecosystem, overseeing respect for its rights and promoting the actions necessary for their protection.
Furthermore, it grants every citizen standing to take action in defence of the rights of the Mar Menor.
The effectiveness of this new model has also begun to manifest itself in courtrooms. In 2026 the Mar Menor was admitted, for the first time in Europe, to participate in criminal proceedings as an acusación particular (private prosecution), through the representative bodies provided for by the law.
This is a historic milestone: for the first time an ecosystem enters legal proceedings as a holder of rights, represented by those who act solely in its interest.
A new idea of justice
Perhaps, then, the question is not whether a river, a forest or a lagoon can become subjects of law. The real question is another one: if it is the law that establishes who can be the holder of rights, why should nature continue to be excluded from it?
The law does not merely photograph reality: it helps to build it. And the history of law shows that every expansion of the community of subjects recognised by the legal system was, even before being a legislative choice, the reflection of an evolution of legal and social consciousness. The recognition of nature as a subject of law does not change what nature is; it changes the way in which the law regards it and, consequently, the way in which it protects it.
