UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

‘Rights of Nature’ as co-constitution of law and religion: comparing the law-making process in the creation of legal personhood for the Ganges River and the Amami rabbit

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1080/09637494.2026.2649830

Authors

Moe Nakazora

Reported year

2026

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.848331+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-10T16:58:51.503304+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

University of Tsukuba

Reported affiliation countries

JP

Documentary abstract — original language

Previous comparative Rights of Nature (RoN) research has predominantly focused on secular dimensions, examining the diversity of legal designs and frameworks across cases sharing the meta-norm of Earth Jurisprudence. While some studies acknowledge religion as a factor shaping diverse RoN forms, they tend to treat religious contexts as stable, essentialised ‘legal cultures’ that pre-exist the law-making process. This contribution proposes an alternative approach to comparison based on ethnographic fieldwork in India and Japan. Instead of analysing existing laws or judgments, I compare how the legal concept of RoN becomes entangled with religious matters in the process of a court of law reaching its decision. To achieve this, I focus on two cases: the 2017 public interest litigation in the Uttarakhand High Court, which granted the Ganges River ‘the same legal rights as humans’, and the Amami Oshima court case (1995–2000) against the construction of a golf course, in which the plaintiffs were the Amami rabbit and three other animal species. By comparing how lawyers compared the ‘Rights of Nature’ concept with people’s religious interests, feelings, and natural entities, I elucidate the dynamic entanglement and co-making of legal and religious elements and the under-researched multiplicity of emergent RoN cases.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1080/09637494.2026.2649830

OPENALEX

W7155061344

OPENAIRE

doi_________::ecca724de8a13844ca964f19accc785e

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

Article · article

Natural entities mentioned

River · Species

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

Sources

OpenAIRE · Record 1

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2026.2649830
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W7155061344

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:w1530218722 · CITES
• openalex:w2031322854 · CITES
• ‘Beyond Human Ownership’? Property, Power and Legal Personality for Nature in Aotearoa New Zealand · CITES
• Toward a property rights theory of legal rights for rivers · CITES
• Conferring legal personality on the world’s rivers: A brief intellectual assessment · CITES
• River Goddesses, Personhood and Rights of Nature: Implications for Spiritual Ecology · CITES
• The Politics of Rights of Nature: Strategies for Building a More Sustainable Future · CITES
• openalex:w4213259298 · CITES
• openalex:w4280606172 · CITES
• The Rights of Nature as a Bridge between Land-Ownership Regimes: The Potential of Institutionalized Interplay in Post-Colonial Societies · CITES
• openalex:w4389512398 · CITES
• Comparative Analysis of Rights of Nature (Ron) Cases Worldwide: Features of Emergence and Implementation · CITES
• Putting the rights of nature on the map. A quantitative analysis of rights of nature initiatives across the world – Second Edition · CITES
• openalex:w575988172 · CITES
• openalex:w920793572 · CITES

1 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Documentary validated

Library