Rights of Nature: Legal Philosophy Meets Democracy
The Swiss Cantonal Reuss-Initiative
Abstract
The Reuss-Initiative, a popular initiative to change the constitution of the Swiss Canton of Lucerne aims to grant public water bodies legal personality and fundamental rights for their existence and ecological integrity. Existing environmental laws are ineffective because the waters lack legal standing to challenge political pressure in court. The call for legal personality and fundamental rights is based not only on legal philosophy but on political grounds. The paper explains why it makes sense from a democratic perspective to give legal personality in a first step to non-sentience water bodies instead of sentient beings.
Submitted: March 8, 2026 | Accepted: May 28, 2026 | Published Aug. 6, 2026 | Language: en
Keywords Colère publique • Fundamental rights • Legal personality • Natural entities • Rights for Nature • Reuss-Initiative • Constitution • Democracy • Water bodies
Copyright © 2026 Markus Schaerli, Angelo Breda. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.