Plant rights are rights that plants may be entitled to. Such issues are often raised in connection with discussions about animal rights or biocentrism.
On the question of whether animal rights can be extended to plants, philosopher Tom Regan argues that animals acquire rights due to being aware, what he calls "subjects-of-a-life". He argues that this does not apply to plants, and that even if plants did have rights, abstaining from eating meat would still be moral due to the use of plants to rear animals.[1] Philosopher Paul Taylor holds that all life has inherent worth and argues for respect for plants, but does not assign them rights.[2] Christopher D. Stone proposed in a 1972 paper titled "Should Trees Have Standing?" that if corporations are assigned rights, so should natural objects such as trees.[3][4] When challenged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to become vegetarian, Timothy McVeigh argued that "plants are alive too, they react to stimuli (including pain); have circulation systems, etc."[5][6] The Animal Liberation Front argues that there is no evidence that plants can experience pain, and that to the extent they respond to stimuli, it is like a device such as a thermostat responding to sensors.[7]
In his dissent to the 1972 Sierra Club v. Morton decision by the United States Supreme Court, William O. Douglas wrote about whether plants might have legal standing:
| “ | Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life... The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled. | ” |
Samuel Butler's Erewhon contains a chapter, "The Views of an Erewhonian Philosopher Concerning the Rights of Vegetables".[8] The Swiss Constitution contains a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms," and the Swiss government has conducted ethical studies pertaining to how the dignity of plants is to be protected.[9] The single-issue Party for Plants entered candidates in the 2010 parliamentary election in The Netherlands.[10] Such concerns have been criticized as evidence that modern culture is "causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns."[11]