Alberto Frigerio writes:
After tracing the historical and conceptual evolution of legal personhood—from human and corporate subjects to nature and ecosystems—it explores the moral, relational, and symbolic dimensions that might justify extending personhood to heritage.
The analysis highlights both the potential benefits of such recognition, including stronger ethical and representational protections, and the associated risks, such as legal inflation, state appropriation, and conflicts with ownership and restitution law.
Ultimately, it argues that rethinking heritage through the lens of relational personhood reveals the need for a more pluralistic and ethically responsive legal imagination.
Recognizing cultural heritage as a subject of law is conceptually reasonable though normatively complex. Such recognition would affirm the moral and relational significance of heritage as a carrier of identity and collective memory, extending the logic already applied to natural entities in environmental law.
- Ethically, it would reframe heritage protection as a matter of justice and reciprocity rather than property management.
- Legally, it could enhance protection by granting heritage representational standing through guardianship or trusteeship models.
Yet this transformation would require careful calibration to avoid overextension of personhood and to balance new forms of representation with existing ownership and restitution frameworks.
