The Constitutional Rights of Advanced Robots (and of Human Beings)

Abstract

Constitutional rights create and destroy otherwise available options for the rights-bearer, for governments, and for affected third parties. Thus, conferring a constitutional right always requires at least some minimal defense. But conferring a constitutional right can certainly be appropriate if the recipient of the right seems to deserve or otherwise qualify for the right in question, or if conferring the right makes sense on other, perhaps partly pragmatic, grounds. Among our civic responsibilities is to better understand the nature, justification, and the appropriate scope and extension of constitutional rights. Most often, we consider these matters in some specific political context. But it is also possible to reflect upon these dimensions of constitutional rights from a more detached perspective, stimulated by hypothetical, or at least less pressing, circumstances. This Article takes the latter tack and seeks to enhance our understanding of constitutional rights for humans by considering the provocative case of what might be termed "advanced robots."