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.
