Crossed Wires: The vexed spectre of awarding legal personhood to AI
Daily Maverick | 29.06.2026 00:59
In 2025, my friend Cormac Cullinan, a Cape Town–based environmental attorney, won the global Shackleton Medal for the Protection of the Polar Regions. He received it for his Antarctic Rights initiative — a campaign to have Antarctica and the Southern Ocean recognised, in law, as a legal person. He has long argued (and written a book about it, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice) that natural phenomena like the Antarctic, Table Mountain and other assorted wonders of the Earth should be given legal protection, which would give them the best chance of long-term survival against anthropogenic degradation.
