ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on C.D. Stone’s groundbreaking 1972 article and its reception. In addition, it both provides an intellectual historical context and makes some observations on substantive issues. The chapter proceeds by asking six questions about Stone’s article, which concern the author’s intentions, converting the “unthinkable” into the “thinkable,” the revolution it aims to advance, its argumentative and rhetorical choices, and its relation to environmental democracy. The article has often been approached in terms of a paradigm change, the concept coined by Thomas Kuhn. Like a scientific paradigm, legal thinking tends to transform, so that what was once considered impossible and unintelligible can become normal. For such a change to take place, Stone’s account identifies three components: conceptual intelligibility, change, and normalization. We distinguish three steps in Stone’s argument: 1) the denial of conceptual intelligibility: there are other holders of rights in addition to (natural) living human beings; 2) the argument from historical examples: ideas about right-holders varies historically; and 3) the argument from value change: it accords with current values and needs to transform our conception of right-holders. We conclude that Stone’s article is less revolutionary and less of a paradigm-shift than is often thought.
