Lisa Siraganian, "The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots" (Verso, 2026)

In this episode of New Books in Law, host Tim Wynum McCarthy interviews Lisa Siraganian, author of 'The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots' (Verso, 2026). Siraganian, a literary scholar and professor at Johns Hopkins University, traces the historical evolution of legal personhood from its roots in corporate law to its contemporary expansion into non-human entities like fetuses, animals, rivers, and AI. She argues that the current trend of granting personhood to non-humans—while often well-intentioned—relies on a hollowed-out, corporate-style model that strips personhood of its social, moral, and collective dimensions. This results in a depoliticized legal framework that fails to protect the very entities it claims to defend, while simultaneously undermining human dignity and collective responsibility. The episode explores how this model reduces complex beings to isolated, morally significant individuals—like a fetus with unique DNA or a tree as a solitary entity—while erasing their embeddedness in relationships, ecosystems, and social contexts. Siraganian warns that this trend distracts from more effective political and structural solutions, such as labor organizing and rights-based movements, and calls for a reimagining of personhood centered on obligation, solidarity, and publicness rather than legal fiction. Key takeaways include: (1) Expansive legal personhood, modeled on corporate personhood, empties the concept of personhood of its moral and social substance; (2) The focus on individuality and moral significance over duties and relationships reduces entities to property-like forms; (3) Rhetorical strategies—like the erasure of the placenta or the ventriloquizing of nature—serve to obscure the interconnectedness of life; (4) AI personhood debates are shaped by science fiction tropes and utopian fantasies that mask real-world exploitation in AI development; and (5) Sustainable protection of nature, animals, and human rights requires political action, not legal fictions. The overall tone is critically thoughtful and urgent, with a strong emphasis on historical context and ethical responsibility.