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9 Med. L. Int'l 1 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/medclint9 and id is 1 raw text is: Medical Law International, 2008, Vol. 9, pp. 1-12 0968-5332/08 $10 © 2008 A B Academic Publishers-Printed in Great Britain WHICH BEINGS SHOULD BE ENTITLED TO HUMAN RIGHTS? ERWIN BERNAT* Graz University ABSTRACT This essay argues that genetic engineering techniques such as interspecies cloning will anew raise the question of who deserves the status of being a subject of the law. When domestic constitutions and international treaties use the terms 'everyone,' ,no one,' 'person' and 'men and women' they meant 'human beings'. Does the discussion to date on the status of the unborn provide guidance on the question of whether beings that do not belong to the species Homo sapiens could be included among those who earn the right to be recognised by law as persons? What are the characteristics that we see as being typically human? The author comes to the conclusion that the decisive characteristic is the capacity to act for normative reasons, including moral reasons and that the term moral agent or person in a legal sense should be given a definition that is 'interspeciesistic'. 1. The General Concept of Personhood Karl Wolff, a renowned Viennese civilian and philosopher of law' supposedly asked his students the following question when he conducted oral examinations: 'Imagine that you are on top of St. Stephen's Cathedral, looking down. What do you see in Vienna's first district?' The rather confused student would answer, 'Well, I can see men, women, and children walking along the street, I can see dogs, trees and buildings.' That was not the right answer. Karl Wolff expected the students to answer his question in an idiosyncratic 'legalistic' way. They were expected to say that they could see nothing but the subjects and objects of law. Modem law assigns every human being the capacity to be a subject of legal rights and obligations, independent of gender, nationality, origin or intelligence. The formula is simple: every human being is a person, and being a person is a necessary and sufficient condition for having legal rights and obligations. Personhood therefore is nothing but a formal characteristic that makes it possible to perceive an entity as the law's point of reference for rights and obligations. Human beings - as natural persons - are not the only entities

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