One day, while talking to a left-wing animal-rights-activist friend of mine, she claimed that animals born in the US were technically US citizens. I countered that it’s impossible, and that, for example, killing a chicken isn’t murder (Although SOME organizations may disagree). But she said that no where in US law does it state that animals can’t be citizens. Please, help me! What law states that you must be human to be a US citizen?
The 14th amendment defines citizenship:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Animals aren’t “persons”, therefore they can’t be citizens.
Ah, ok. Thanks. But that raises two questions:
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The 14th amendment came after the founding of the US; for that time, could animals be citizens? Also, what about countries which don’t phrase their amendments in this way?
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Would an intelligent non-Homo sapient be a person? If a few neanderthals survived, would they be “Persons”? What about intellegent extraterrestrials born on Earth? Or an undiscovered sapient species?
I was going to say that the whole question is ridiculous but then you threw in Neanderthals and that made things much much interesting. They are commonly referenced as another human species as well so that would presumably make them “persons” if they were still around. There was probably at least one other (now extinct) human species, Homo floresiensis (hobbit people), that were only discovered a few years ago on an island in Indonesia that were most likely around more recently than the Neanderthals and local folklore even suggests that they might have even been around as recently as 100 years ago. I don’t know about that last part but it was still a close call to have two human species around when these matters were defined.
Now, Japanese scientists have said that they can, with current tech, clone a woolly mammoth. What if they cloned another human species? Are clones citizens? (I mean legally, not morally.)
I do: nonsense, as you rightly suspect. Without hijacking the thread, it is either archaeologists who know nothing about folk belief, or (more likely) the mass media who know nothing about either archaeology or folk belief. Sorry for the hijack.
Also, they’re furrn born. 
NOOO!!! My first thread has already been attacked by puns! It’s… It’s… Puntastic!
On topic:
But if a human was cloned, it would be a citizen, right? And if a non-human humanoid was cloned… What then?
Please tell me you then asked your friend whether there is anywhere in US law stating that staplers cannot be citizens.
LOL, that’s what I said! (actually, I used pumpkins).
I tried to tell her that it was so obvious that animals can’t be citizens that a law wasn’t NEEDED, but she IS a democrat…
We already have clones. They are called identical twins, triplets etc. Medical technology already helps many that can’t have children the old-fashioned way achieve their goals. The intersection of those two ideas tells me strongly that particular philosophical argument isn’t going to go very far in terms of homo sapiens no matter how they are produced. If someone figures out how to produce a brand new Neanderthal baby things could get interesting however.
So what do you get if you cross an American citizen with a chimpanzee?
What DO you get?
Probably an American citizen capable of independent thought, tolerance, strong work ethic, and a better voting record.
We won’t know until your biography comes out but I bet it will be interesting. ;). I kid.
Hmm… You get eleven new stores, including chimps-r-us, and a lawsuit totaling ten trillion dollars against the racial implecations of Going Bananas?
On (1), pre-14th amendment citizenship was defined by statute plus the precedents in Common Law (remind her there is such a thing), and I’d be pretty comfrotable wagering on that animals have NEVER been considered natural persons. And virtually every nation in its citizenship laws refers to “persons” or whatever the word for the concept is in their language and legal system.
On (2), there would probably be at some point a legal accommodation to that effect, but looking at how hard it was to get such consideration for merely different subsegments of the H. sapiens population, it would probably take long. It would also depend on how the other species’ level of "progress’ compares with the dominant. Aliens parking their mothership on synchronous orbit and landing shuttles in Central Park, would likely have an easy time getting recognition. Surviving pre-sapiens humans, maybe as a “minority group” IF able to learn and use the Sapiens’s languages and adopt the same levels of culture and use of technology (a-la GEICO Cavemen, if you’ll forgive the dreadful example); otherwise they’d *at best * had been shunted into preserves as “savages” and given limited personhood as wards of the Sapiens. Undiscovered Earth sentient species – they’d better be able to learn fast how to effectively communicate with humans and it helps if they’re cute, or know and want to share the cure for cancer and global warming: the whales and dolphins aren’t in the fullness of civil rights, are they? AIs will probably be denied personhood as long as possible, as humans do all we can to retain the the right to pull the plug and melt the chips if they get too cocky.
Babale, AFAIK, a human born from cloning, being a human, would be under most reasonable readings of precedent as much a person in its own right as any member of a set of twins or triplets.
Nah, the chimp-Americans wouldn’t have the same sense of childish lawsuit-happy entitlement and would, instead, revel in the irony.
Then technically animals can become US President.
I know a clone of a human is human, I was asking about a clone of a non-human humanoid.
What about this: Through some technology, a human mind is put into control of a robot or animal. Is that a person?