Corporations are people.

I thank my partner for engaging in another debate – he is among the most eloquent debaters I have faced thus far, and am extremely pleased to debate him once more on an issue related to Citizens United.Firstly, I would like to clarify that this resolution is not a semantic ambush; I am not going to delve into a semantics game with my partner. I would like to debate the concept of corporate personhood, and whether it is just for them to be regarded as such.Legally speaking, corporations are people. There is voluminous legal precedence for and protecting the doctrine of corporate personhood, or indirectly related to it: Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) - Corporate charters are ruled to have constitutional protection. Munn v. State of Illinois (1876) - Property cannot be used to unduly expropriate wealth from a community (later reversed). Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) - The substance of this case (a tax dispute) is of little significance, but this fateful case subsequently was cited as precedent for granting corporations constitutional rights. Noble v. Union River Logging Railroad Company (1893) - A corporation first successfully claims Bill of Rights protection (5th Amendment) Lochner v. New York (1905) - States cannot interfere with “private contracts” between workers and corporation — marks the ascension of “substantive due process” (later mitigated after President Roosevelt threatend to add Justices to the Court). Liggett v. Lee (1933) - Chain store taxes prohibited as violation of corporations’ “due process” rights. Ross v. Bernhard (1970)- 7th Amendment right (jury trial) granted to corporations. U.S. v. Martin Linen Supply (1976) - A corporation successfully claims 5th Amendment protection against double jeopardy. Marshall v. Barlow (1978) - The Court creates 4th Amendment protection for corporations — federal inspectors must obtain a search warrant for a safety inspection on corporate property. First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) - Struck down a Massachusetts law that banned corporate spending to influence state ballot initiatives, even spending by corporate political action committees. Spending money to influence politics is now a corporate “right.” Justice Rehnquist’s dissent is a recommended read. Austin v. Michigan Chamer of Commer (1990) - Upheld limits on corporate spending in elections. Thomson v. Western States Medical Center (2002) Nike v Kasky (2002) - Nike claims California cannot require factual accuracy of the corporation in its PR campaigns. California’s Supreme Court disagreed. The U.S. Supreme Court took up the case on appeal, then issued a non-ruling in 2003. Randall v Sorrell (2006) While this case dealt with the legality of Vermont’s contribution limits, not corporations directly, it carried important implications for corporate political influence. Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (2010). In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court overrules Austin and a century of federal legislative precedent to proclaim broad electioneering rights for corporations. Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana The U.S. Supreme Court overruled Montana’s Supreme Court ruling, which had upheld a challenge to the state’s century-old ban on corporate electioneering. People can be defined as the “plurality of persons considered as a whole” [1]. Corporate personhood is defined as the legal concept that a corporation may sue and be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons. I therefore ask that the audience and my partner both understand that I am not regarding a corporation as a single person; it is an entity composed of persons under law. Therefore, as it is possible that non-human corporations could exist, or corporations could exist that are completely without any active human membership, the statement that "Corporations are people" cannot always be a true statement.“Corporation”, deriving from corpus, the Latin word for “body”, or a “body of people”, can truly only refer to a body of people. Note that the resolution did not specify within the United States, so it is unnecessary to note exceptional legal technicalities that occur in some specific nations. Non-human corporations are by definition, not corporations, and therefore this argument is irrelevant. The failure of reversibilityMy opponent commits the fallacy of composition within this argument and is invalid. Similar arguments can be used to demonstrate the reversibility argument’s fallacious nature: Humans are living beings. Living beings are not humans. Humans are not living beings. I feel that this is a simple in-group affirmation - and makes no sense outside of that usage. Therefore, we must defend humanity from becoming collectivized and corporatized, in order that we may refute a simple ad hominem taunt. I’m not sure where my opponent is going with this argument; individuality is not at stake here. The argument I’m making is that corporations can be considered groups of people, both legally and literally. The primary reason for bringing about this issue is to dismiss the notion that corporations are these monstrous legal entities exploiting individual welfare. The town of Lewis, Vermont, legally incorporated, has had many periods in its history when not a single living person made up any part of the legal entity. This minor exception to the concept of corporations cannot be used to refute the notion of corporate personhood – by definition, corporations are groups of people; that is the extent to which they will be classified. Any other circumstance is a rare legal and technical obscurity that lies within legislative loopholes. To broadly refute my opponent’s three primary arguments: 1. Some corporations do not have any human membershipThis concept runs contrary to the definition of corporation being discussed here. If corporations are regarded as people, they are people, and therefore these obscure exceptions are extraneous and irrelevant.2. There is no legal reason why the corporation must be comprised of humansWithin what legal system? There are plenty of different legal systems that have differing definitions of corporations; the holistic concept of corporation is what is being discussed here.3. The premise is an ad hominem taunt, and cannot actually be discussedNot particularly. This issue extends to many important events in the world, notably Citizens United v. FEC. Whether corporate personhood is a legitimate concept is what is being discussed here.