Description
In the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, a crew of astronauts crash-lands on a strange planet dominated by an ape civilisation that treats the human population how animals are treated on Planet Earth. The apes capture Taylor, the leader of the mission, and put him before a tribunal of the National Academy. When his defender, chimpanzee Dr. Zira, requests to know the charges against him, the tribunal faces the question: Does Taylor, as a human, have rights under ape law?In this courtroom, the legal position of “the other” comes into question. When a legal system faces the choice whether to recognise “the other” as a subject within its framework, this exposes and fundamentally challenges its boundaries. How are these boundaries re-negotiated between “the self” and “the other” on an unfolding spectrum of sameness and difference? Which indicators serve as a shibboleth, guarding the passage into the legal framework of consideration and thus delimiting “the self” and “the other”? And how does the binary conception of legal personhood cut through this spectrum?
Our contribution takes the hearing from Planet of the Apes as a starting point to discuss the themes of legal subjectivity and personhood, of othering, of domination, and connects it to two legal controversies. First, we revisit the Valladolid debate (1550-51) during which Spanish theologians and jurists discussed the treatment of the Indigenous people living under Spanish domination and whether they could be subjects within the ius gentium. Second, we interrogate contemporary debates surrounding the rights of nature and attempts to break with an anthropocentric approach to legal personality. The powerful, almost blunt metaphor of Planet of the Apes thus becomes a frame that encapsulates and connects commonalities across centuries of legal controversy.
| Period | 19 Jun 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Roundtable Law and Popular Culture VII |
| Event type | Symposium |
| Location | Maastricht, NetherlandsShow on map |