Corporations Are People and Should Be Granted the Rights of People

That quote by Jefferson is from the original version of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. It is what most people are quoting when they say that we have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I brought it up to rebut the points that you had brought up. I should have brought forth the other quote, but I must have copied the incorrect passage. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused. The final version goes as follows, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Both quotes specify that all men are created equal. While I used the incorrect quote, all of the points brought up in my opening argument still stand as both versions use the same specification of "men". For a basic source of proof, you can see the quote here: http://en.wikipedia.org... Before I go on, I wish to remind my opponent that this debate primarily revolves around the rights described in the Bill of Rights and the whole of the Constitution. This was explained in my description of the debate. The rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are not legally binding structures within US law, and cannot be truly considered as part of this debate. The reason why I talked about the Declaration of Independence was to rebut the claims of my opponent and to further detail how the words "men" and "people" were specified within America's founding documents. Nonetheless, the rights described by the Declaration of Independence cannot be applied, even in an ideological sense, to corporations for the reasons described above. As for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself, they both provide legal rights. When a case is taken before the Supreme Court of the United States, they look at laws that have been passed, and the Constitution. This is because the rights, such as freedom of speech, right to bear arms, and freedom of and from religion are all given to us in a legal structure within the Constitution. They are what shape American law, how our society functions, and what our government may and may not do. The Declaration of Independence was more of an outline of what ideals America would follow when it became its own nation rather than a legally binding document. This is why the Constitution is amended when new rights need to be added or removed, such as the amendment to end slavery, or the amendment that gave women the right to vote. As for definition, they do change over time. The word "gay", for example, has changed from a word meaning happy, to a word meaning homosexual. The definitions of words will always change. Despite this, we are only able to use the definitions of words as they are now. We cannot legally use the meaning of a word that it will have in the future now, as we don't know what definition it will have in the future. Unless we are to officially change the meaning of words, or pass further amendments to alter the current wording of the Constitution, we must continue to use the current definitions. Another point, groups aren't given the same rights as people through the US Constitution. A Basketball team is not given freedom of speech or freedom of religion, as they are not humans. The people that make up the basketball team are given those rights though, as they are humans. Given the definitions that we currently use for human, men, people, and corporation, we cannot expand the rights of humans to that of a corporation, to animals, or to any other living being. Yet another important distinction that I wish to make is that a corporation is quite different from any living organism. Most living organisms are composed of cells that are not sentient. They cannot make conscious decisions and cannot think on an intelligent level. They cannot suffer, they cannot experience joy. They are incapable of having a cultural background, a religion, or an ideological belief. A corporation, on the other hand, is composed of humans, creatures that are sentient and are capable of conscious decisions, and rational and intelligent thought. These humans have religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds, ideological beliefs. They can feel pain, experience joy, and can think on a level that no other known of create is capable of doing. Cells are not equivalent, by definition nor by capability, to humans. They should not be treated as equals, nor should the bodies or corporations that they compose. By this line of thought, a corporation cannot be considered to be the same as living beings. The corporation itself is not alive, nor is it composed of the same fundamental structures as living creatures are composed of. A corporation is not alive, and only exists because humans created it. When the humans that created the corporation disband, the corporation no longer exists. It was never born, nor did it ever die. It never lived. It was never a living being. It was a legal fiction created by humans to serve humans. The corporation itself, as it is not a living being, and even less so a human, cannot, and should not, be given the same rights as the humans that created it.