Corporations and other legal entities will continue to exist even after the world ends

" 1.My opponent appears to be arguing that destruction by natural causes of the record in question has the immediate and automatic effect of unincorporating the legal entity in question (the company). That simply cannot be correct. Imagine that a fire destroys the corporate register. Does that mean that the company ceases to exist? Of course not. " It does if in so doing it destroys every other referent of the concept "corporation", from the assets to the government that protected it ( there is no such thing as a legal system if there is no government). " By the same token, imagine that a person's certificate of marriage is destroyed in a flood. Is the person still married? Of course they are." Not if they aren't still a person. " As posted in my opening argument, companies must be STRUCK OFF the register in order for them to become unincorporated. Striking off does not mean "wiping out". It means that a legally competent and qualified officer (for example a Judge) makes a decision to unincorporate the company and that decision is recorded in the register. " Reality is the ultimate competent authority, above any law. Reality just destroyed all referents of the concept "Corporation." " 2.A corporation is a legal entity in itself. It does NOT comprise its officers. Officers are merely there to manage the corporation. They are not its PART. Equally, shareholders are the OWNERS of the corporation. They are not PART of the corporation. The corporation legally "lives" as an independent legal person. " This is what we know as a "Legal fiction." It's a deliberate falsehood, carried on for convenience of streamlining legal arguments. Ultimately, though, a corporation CANNOT be an entity in itself, cannot exist in it's own right- to exist presumes that it exists as something. What? The contract between the shareholders and the officers- which cannot exist unless shareholders and officers also exist. Any abstraction that cannot be concretized, cannot be said to exist. "It is about the legal status (the existence or otherwise) of a legal entity." So, would you hold that 90% of black men in America are still, by law, enslaved? After all, no competent officer of Confederate Law set them free. The trouble is, the Confederacy no longer exists. And in your scenario, no law exists. The law without enforcement- without a government- is no longer law- it is NOTHING, in the most absolute sense- not a thing. A law that does not exist cannot alter anything else. "I leave no heirs. I have no family. Being the arrogant and pig-headed person that I am, I have no friends. After my death I leave behind a somewhat large house with a swimming pool. No owner, no heirs. My opponent would here be left with no choice but to argue that the said property would then no longer in existence." As "Property" it is indeed no longer in existence. As "House" it is. "Well, physical or not, each share of a corporation is an Asset" Not quite. It is a CLAIM upon an asset. Assets have to exist in their own right, i.e., an asset has a concrete existence. "Imagine that all the shareholders of a trucking company die tomorrow in a massive plane crash (on their way to the Bahamas for a "conference"). Along with them die the directors. There are no heirs. Does that mean that the trucking company has stopped existing?" Trucking company. A group of people who signed a contract to work together under certain terms to transport goods. Where is the group of people? Where is the transportation of goods? All else is legal fiction. This debate, though I agree it is not related to practicality, is not whether the law SAYS they will exist, only whether they will actually exist.