UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Rights of Nature in the United States: An Empirical Analysis of Local Legal Adoption

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1177/23780231261446748

Authors

Raffaele Sindoni · Jesse Callahan Bryant

Reported year

2026

Reported language

en · und

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.906019+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-10T16:58:51.413550+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Yale University · Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Reported affiliation countries

US

Documentary abstract — original language

The authors present the first comprehensive empirical analysis of rights of nature (RoN) adoption in the United States, a globally growing legal movement asserting that rivers, forests, and ecosystems should be holders of rights. Although RoN is often theorized as a globally emergent, biocentric legal innovation, accounts of its U.S. diffusion remain sparse. The authors analyze all U.S. RoN efforts from 2002 to 2024 and integrate them with county-level social and environmental pollution indicators. The analytic strategy proceeds in three stages: (1) descriptive comparisons between RoN and non-RoN counties, (2) analysis of pollution violation intensity to assess RoN links to environmental burden, and (3) hierarchical clustering to assess RoN county heterogeneity. Contrary to existing scholarship that found U.S. RoN to be overwhelmingly white and conservative, the authors find that RoN ordinances arise in diverse sociopolitical and demographic contexts. The authors also find no link of RoN arising in geographies with heightened pollution violations. Thus, this analysis suggests that RoN adoption, despite its immediate legal radicality, has widespread local appeal in the United States. This breadth of relevance raises important contemporary challenges for sociology and points toward new directions for theorizing legal standing beyond the human.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W7162196869

DOI

10.1177/23780231261446748

ISSN

2378-0231

OPENAIRE

doi_________::944c46248dda5a1790e67ab87214c80d

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

Article · article

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

US

Natural entities mentioned

River · Forest · Ecosystem

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

DOAJ · Record 1

OpenAIRE · Record 1

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231261446748
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W7162196869

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w1981622821 · CITES
• The rights of nature in Ecuador: the making of an idea · CITES
• openalex:w2041436136 · CITES
• openalex:w2049017883 · CITES
• openalex:w2054001842 · CITES
• openalex:w2093140817 · CITES
• openalex:w2099204699 · CITES
• openalex:w2111165393 · CITES
• openalex:w2158004269 · CITES
• openalex:w2165716875 · CITES
• openalex:w2167757977 · CITES
• New Transitions from Human Rights to the Environment to the Rights of Nature · CITES
• The Implementation of Earth Jurisprudence through Substantive Constitutional Rights of Nature · CITES
• openalex:w2345221698 · CITES
• Can Rights of Nature Make Development More Sustainable? Why Some Ecuadorian lawsuits Succeed and Others Fail · CITES
• Personhood and the Rights of Nature: The New Subjects of Contemporary Earth Politics1 · CITES
• openalex:w2592976715 · CITES
• Producing juridical knowledge: “Rights of Nature” or the naturalization of rights? · CITES
• Constructing Rights of Nature Norms in the US, Ecuador, and New Zealand · CITES
• openalex:w2909622017 · CITES

0 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.