At Noon on Friday was the panel “The Legal Ramifications of Monster Hunting”
This was a fun one. The panelists were all lawyers, iirc. From the program guide:
Paranormal stories, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Wynonna Earp, often feature slayers and hunters of vampires, demons, and other supernatural monsters. But if that sort of thing happened in the real world, would vampires have due process? Is the exorcist liable if a demon’s host dies during an exorcism? Is being chosen or cursed a plausible legal defense for murder? Could ghosts have property rights?
Gordon B. White (M), Ethan Vodde, Leigh Harlen
The panel started off discussing copyright. The first question, of course, was whether vampires should be considered deceased. If they are, any copyright they hold begins to expire.
The next question was whether killing Bigfoot would be considered murder, or poaching.
The answer to both of these, of course, would depend on our definition of “human.” A lot has been written about that, of course, throughout the history of science fiction. One of the classic examples is H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy.
Some real-world examples of the concept of personhood already being extended beyond humans that were mentioned, and may be worth googling if you’re going down this road in your own work (or just curious) are:
- Hippos who were given personhood after escaping the estate of Pablo Escobar
- Primates in Spain
- Bodies of water. Apparently, some of the North American indigenous water protectors managed to lobby for this.
Meaning of legal words can change from state to state, too. “Suit,” “Accident,” and “occurrence,” all have different legal definitions depending on what state you’re in.
There’s a lot of tort law already about legal culpability that may be applicable. The basic concept of a tort is to “make whole.” That is, undo, or compensate for, the damages done. What if someone, for example, was turned into a vampire against their will? In addition to the question of whether that would be murder or not, how much liability would the person who turned them have for the acts done by the new vampire?
That brought us into the concept of mens rea, or “criminal mind,” which has to do with intention. If a werewolf kills someone while in wolf form, can a prosecutor show intent to kill? It depends a lot about the nature of the werewolves in your world, of course. Even if they don’t retain human faculties while in wolf form, their intent before shifting may be taken into account.
This also led to the question about demon possession. How much liability does the person possessed have? Does it matter if they themselves summoned the demon that possessed them? If they killed someone while possessed, could they be charged with murder? Or negligent homicide? Or are they an innocent victim as well?
I actually dealt with this a little bit in Yellow Tape and Coffee. There is a scene where a werewolf is charged with murder and plea-bargains it to manslaughter, partly by arguing lack of faculty while a wolf. There is question at the time about the appropriateness of allowing him to do so.
What about damage due to an “Act of God?” How does that definition change in a world where there are literal gods running around? Would insurance recognize an Act of the Devil the same way?
Could there be a legal market of people selling their blood to vampires? It’s a tricky legal question right now, because you can’t sell blood, or any other body parts (in the US), but you can legally sell plasma somehow.
As with anything, though, the real answer to everything is: the law is whatever people make it. If a vampire lobby successfully gets them recognized as living people, then legally they are. All it takes is the ability to convince enough people that they are.
In Yellow Tape and Coffee again, I touch on this as Michael, the homicide detective, discusses police procedure, and at what point a werewolf, who can change at will, should be considered armed, or an imminent threat. It’s a field that’ll get explored more in the sequel, which I’ll probably get around to writing some day.