In order to be indistinguishable from a human the alien may have indulged in a fair amount of gene modification. Alternatively he/she/bwrzz/ktaaas/vvvvnth may have done the gene modification on his/her/bwrzza/ktaaasth/vvvvn’chi reproductive organs alone.
My point was that, if (henceforth ‘they’) were capable of producing fertile offspring with humans as a result, normal taxonomy throws a wobbly and says they’re the same species as humans, just a different subspecies (and as Cecil says, we’d probably not have too much of a problem with neanderthals these days, especially as it’s been shown that most of us have a little neanderthal in us). If you wanted to get a little more controversial I suspect that a lot of the time what we refer to as a “race” of humans we should refer to as a “subspecies” - particularly in remote aboriginal tribes with an uncontaminated genetic heritage.
MODERATOR NOTE: Please be aware, this is a column from Dec 2012, revived on Oct 9, 2013 in post #14. – CKDH
psythe, this is the second mangled link I’ve seen. Please take a moment to figure out how to do them correctly. That “original post here” thingy isn’t working.
If aliens land and decide to stay a while, they’ll need to be covered by our laws. Suppose someone kills an alien, and the jury decides it wasn’t murder because the victim wasn’t a person? Before such a travesty of justice has a chance to happen and cause an interstellar diplomatic incident, we’ll need to declare them legally persons. This will need to happen long before we elect them to public office.
I’m quite sure that the amended definition of person would be put into law in most of the countries if group of outer space aliens decide to linger on Earth for a while.
Would we define special laws concerning on how to treat those aliens? I’d say it depends what they are ready to pay for.
There were also a number of German speakers in South Carolina during that period. They were from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. My family was Swiss.
Well, first of all, the general current biological definition of species isn’t a group that can interbreed with each other (after all, for instance lions and tigers can interbreed in artificial conditions but they’re separate species), it’s a group that regularly does interbreed with each other. Though as genetic engineering advances, the concept of ‘species’ may indeed be rethought, or perhaps seen as only applicable to natural non-genetically-engineered populations.
And secondly, most of the time what we refer to as a ‘race’ of humans is a group that doesn’t really have any biological/genetic basis. So it doesn’t make sense to refer to any ‘race’ as a biological subspecies.
The legal blog Law and the Multiverseregularly looks at issues surrounding the definition of “person” and how it applies to extraterrestrials. One example is thisposting looking at whether it would be legal for a human to marry a non-human, using the examples of Genie (a djinn) marrying Major Nelson and Clark Kent marrying Lois Lane.
It must be remembered that in the multiverse world that is comics there are often many variations of origins of superheroes. In some variations Superman (Kal-El) was sent as a baby in a rocket to Earth (Marlon Brando looking on wistfully). In other continuities he is sent in a “birthing matrix” and it is from that matrix that the Kent family pulls him. In the latter the Supreme Court found him to be “born” in Kansas when the Kent family pulled him frmo teh matrix, analogizing the matrix to a womb, apparently. Action Comcs Annual 3 (DC Comics 1991)
The authors of this blog haave just published a book called “The Law of Superheroes” that goes into many legal issues surrounding superheroes and supervillains.
Which isn’t even necessary, because even in the continuities where Superman was born on Krypton and sent here as a baby (which is to say, most of them), he’s still a natural-born citizen of the US. Foundlings are considered to be natural-born citizens of the place where they’re found, unless that status is challenged before their 18th birthday, after which the status cannot be revoked.
I think that’s only true of countries which have acceded to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (though other countries may have legislation which is analogous, or covered under jus soli).
[QUOTE=Immigration and Naturalization Act]
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
<snip>
(f) a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States;
[/quote]
I’ve highlighted where the statute has ages different from the ones mentioned earlier.
Interesting. I was told way back in school that the reason lions and tigers were separate species despite being able to produce viable offspring was that the offspring were not fertile and thus not truly viable. However it turns out that both ligers and tigons have produced fertile offspring, so I’m guessing the definition given above is a recent thing?
Sorry about the duff links BTW - I will endeavor to be more careful in the future!