History Main / InhumanableAlienRights

A subtrope of WhatMeasureIsANonHuman and usually [[hottip:*:Obviously, legal problems are easily fixed, but in fiction typically no one ever bothers to do it.]] YouFailLawForever. Overlaps with TheyWouldCutYouUp. Because of the above FridgeLogic this trope sits neatly between AnimalWrongsGroup and ThoseWackyNazis. See also ZombieAdvocate, when a character advocates for the rights of non-humans.

* Completely averted in ''AMiracleOfScience''. Artificial Intelligences are considered people, both legally and ethically. Especially notable since the Evil Plan of the Mad Scientist they're hunting is to Take Over The World using a robot army. Even though he's a villain and thus exempt from the moral standards held by the protagonists and society in large, he still treats his creations with respect and actually listens to their advice.
** Further respect for the AIs: Benjamin and Caprice are getting shot at by an army of robots. They grab a motorcycle and run for it, until Mars can determine that their pursuers are simple robots, not Artificial Intelligences, at which point Benjamin makes quick work of them with his pistol rail gun.

* In ''DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'', there are several races of people, some of which are about as tough as a normal human, and others which are extremely powerful and long-lived. When someone commits a crime against a member of another race, he's judged and sentenced by members of his own race, which may lead to a sentence of comunity service for a murder conviction in more extreme cases. This leads to a lot of vigilante justice in the form of "adventuring".

** Dispite K and Hulkling both being born in the US, making them US Citizens, but then again the MadScientist was cleary going rough.

* Explored hardcore in ''{{District 9}}''. In theory, the aliens are legal residents of South Africa, with all the standard rights to life, liberty and property that that entails. In practice, they're confined to an uninhabitable trash-heap, exploited as sub-minimum wage labor, forced to subsist off of offal and cat food, left to fend for themselves against crime syndicates that the police have no interest in dealing with, and are generally treated little better than animals. When an "unlicensed" nest of alien eggs is discovered by the military, they proceed to "abort" the unborn aliens. [[KillItWithFire With a flamethrower.]]
** [[spoiler:The perfectly human Wikus]] provides a straighter example when [[spoiler:a splash of AppliedPhlebotinum triggers a gradual transformation into an alien, at first just his arm, at which point he is whisked away to a research facility where no one treats him as even remotely human, instead needlessly electrocuting him and discussing how they're going to harvest his organs right in front of him while he begs for mercy.]]

* In the film version of ''IRobot'', the head of U.S. Robotics outright states (and does so accurately, as a matter of fact) that the death of a human being at the hands of a robot isn't a murder, because legally, murder is defined as one human illegally causing the death of another. A robot killing a human is "an industrial accident". On the other hand, if somebody reprogrammed the robot to kill a person, then that ''would'' be murder. Later on it turns out that [[spoiler:Sonny ''did'' kill him (for good reasons), but can't be charged by that same definition.]]

* Subverted in Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld/TheFifthElephant'', in which the conscientious Sam Vimes insists on going through proper police procedure, including asking the creature whether it is resisting arrest, before firing on an insane werewolf. The ethics of killing "monsters" that are also sentient creatures in the Discworld is dealt with in several of its books. For instance, Granny Weatherwax insists on having an anthropomorphic wolf given a proper burial after it is killed at its own request.

* RobertAHeinlein's short story, ''Jerry Was a Man'', is about an attempt by a genetically modified chimpanzee to achieve human rights. A very rich human woman adopts Jerry. Worried that the company that owns Jerry might decide to have him killed when he is no longer useful, she hires a law firm to have Jerry declared human. The law firm coaches Jerry on how to testify (it is technically illegal to coach a witness, although almost impossible to prosecute).

The one time when this trope clearly applies is when the human in question can be argued to have significantly sub-normal intelligence. Examples would include embryos, young babies, terminal-comas, and exceptionally severe levels of mental illness/disability. In such circumstances the, "But they're as smart as we are, and thus should be our equals" reasoning breaks down completely. Babies are not as smart as we are, or even as smart as dogs are. Yet the babies get rights, and the dogs don't. While perfectly understandable from a social and evolutionary point of view, this is difficult to prove by the standards of evidence that a law court (or science) requires. In this way the trope is also linked to AnimalWrongsGroup, who take the not entirely unlogical stance that if a baby is sapient then so are furfarm mink and lab rats. "Well surely it isn't the other way round..."

Similarly, most stories tend to avoid the complexities of non human children, or the other creature's point of view. A werewolf killing a baby is obviously evil! A human animal charity 'accidentally' killing a baby werewolf? I mean how could the charity have known? Where as the werewolf/monster/alien must have known! Human babies are of course so obviously intelligent...

A subtrope of WhatMeasureIsANonHuman and usually [[hottip:*:Obviously, legal problems are easily fixed, but in fiction typically no one ever bothers to do it.]] YouFailLawForever. Overlaps with TheyWouldCutYouUp. Because of the above FridgeLogic this trope sits neatly between AnimalWrongsGroup and ThoseWackyNazis.

* The ghosts from DannyPhantom. Yes, they used to be human ([[AreGhostsAreDifferent some of them, anyway]]) but now they're dead, powerful and [[SarcasmMode all obviously evil]], so its perfectly within human jurisdiction to experiment and destroy them without trial. No wonder Danny doesn't want his secret revealed.

* {{Lois McMaster Bujold}}'s ''[[VorkosiganSaga Falling Free]]'' has the project which created the quadies operating in a system where they could be classified as "Post-fetal experimental tissue cultures" and therefor have no rights.

* {{Lois McMaster Bujold}}'s ''Falling Free'' has the project which created the quadies operating in a system where they could be classified as "Post-fetal experimental tissue cultures" and therefor have no rights.

* ''{{Aquamarine}}:'' OrSoIHeard.

* The ''Civil War'' crossover between ''YoungAvengers'' and ''{{Runaways}}'' mined this a lot: SHIELD "cape killers" feel okay with firing on Victor because he's "just a robot," and Hulkling, Karolina and Xavin are all lined up by a MadScientist for dissection because they don't have any legal rights as aliens.

*** The golems are an interesting subversion in how the police behave. Vimes, at one point, is asked to arrest Dorfl for committing a murder, which the golem was confessing to, but he knew was innocent. To get out of this, he deliberately invokes this trope, pointing out that, legally, golems aren't people, and thus can't murder anyone, and if anything, it's the golem's owner who's the murderer. The owner attempts to abandon his ownership of the golem, at which point Vimes points out he can't do that because it's [[CrowningMomentofFunny littering]]. Carrot then buys Dorfl for a dollar and gives him to himself.

* Inverted and subverted on ''BabylonFive'', where a gray alien gets sued for damages by a human because its ancestor had abducted and experimented on the plaintiff's ancestor. Thus, it's the human whos InhumanableAlienRights were disregarded, and the offender (or at least its grandchild) does get called out for it in court.

* [[SubvertedTrope Cleverly subverted]] in the ''[[SaturdayNightLive Coneheads]]'' movie, in which INS Deputy Commissioner Gorman Seedling is pursuing the Coneheads not because they are extraterrestrials, but because they lack green cards or any other immigration papers, and thus are illegal aliens in the ''legal'' sense of the word.

Whether or not non-humans have any legal rights is something yet to be decided by any court. Technically, they have no legal rights, as [[LoopholeAbuse laws are written to cover only known life forms]]. Thus, [[OffOnATechnicality technically, "the pursuers" would not be risking their freedom]]. On the other hand, this does mean the alien/magical being has no legal obligation NOT to simply kill the nuisance, as said being committing a murder is not covered by law either. And this technicality does not cover original humans who gained powers or something, either.

Nor does it cover humans who are legally 'dead', as nothing restrict rights to only 'living' humans. In fact, actual dead real world humans still have property rights, aka, their estate, although someone else is needed to manage and dissolve it. There's really no reason to think that the dead would not have other rights or protections under the law if they bothered to ask for them.

* In the film version of ''IRobot'', the head of U.S. Robotics outright states (and does so accurately, as a matter of fact) that the death of a human being at the hands of a robot isn't a murder, because legally, murder is defined as one human illegally causing the death of another. A robot killing a human is "an industrial accident". On the other hand, if somebody reprogrammed the robot to kill a person, then that ''would'' be murder. Later on it turns out that [[spoiler: sonny ''did'' kill him (for good reasons), but can't be charged by that same definition.]]

* Inverted and subverted ''BabylonFive'', where a gray alien gets sued for damages by a human because its ancestor had abducted and experimented on the plaintiff's ancestor. Thus, it's the human whos InhumanableAlienRights were disregarded, and the offender (or at least its grandchild) does get called out for it in court.

[[AC:Literature]]

* ''{{Heroes}}''

* Touched on in Season 4 of BuffyTheVampireSlayer, with the Initiative's treatment of Oz the werewolf. They wanted to experiment on him despite the fact that he, unlike most of the demons and monsters they dealt with, had a legal existence as a person and a student.

* Reversed in ''{{Planet 51}}'', where the native military wants to dissect the human astronaut.

* In the film version of ''IRobot'', the head of U.S. Robotics outright states (and does so accurately, as a matter of fact) that the death of a human being at the hands of a robot isn't a murder, because legally, murder is defined as one human illegally causing the death of another. A robot killing a human is "an industrial accident". On the other hand, if somebody reprogrammed the robot to kill a person, then that ''would'' be murder. Later on it turns out that [[spoiler: sonny ''did'' kill him (for good reasons), but can't be changed by that same definition.]]