Corporations Are People and Should Be Granted the Rights of People

In regard to the quotes that I used, both were written by Jefferson. They are his own words, and were merely used by Boyd in his transcript, but was not altered or written by Boyd in any fashion. I once again direct you to the Wikipedia article that I linked earlier for my proof. And while it is true that there are differences between the rough draft and the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, both explicitly use the word "men". Not living beings, not things, nor corporations. Jefferson uses the word "men", and for this very reason, no other being can be legally included within the ideological rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence. I once again must state that the Declaration of Independence holds no legal jurisdiction over American law. In no court of law could it be used, and in no case has it ever been used over the Constitution to object or to support American law. The goals of the Declaration of Independence were to separate America from England, to outline what Britain had done wrong, and to detail what ideals America's constitution would use. Many of the ideals that Jefferson addressed in the Declaration of Independence are written into law within the Constitution, and only through the Constitution can those ideals be used in law. Before I proceed, I must quote the US Constitution. The fifth amendment of America's constitution goes as follows, "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. " Once again, the language of the Constitution is very clear. It uses the word person, not living being, not corporation, and not thing. While it may bring up some of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, it makes sure to apply itself only to humans. The rights to life and liberty and property, as described in the fifth amendment, are given only to people. Companies, groups, and businesses all existed long before the Constitution was written, and had America's founding fathers desired to apply these rights to other living beings, they certainly would have done so. However, with the wording that the Constitution currently uses, these rights apply only to humans. As for Bastiat, my opponent has once again brought up a foreign point of view. There are billions of people on Earth, each of which posses the ability to form opinions on whether or not rights can be attributed to beings that are not corporations. However, these opinions can only be considered as part of this argument if they have been put into American law. The opinions of Bastiat and Takac are important when considering ideals, but, as they took no part in writing American law, their opinions cannot alter the current understanding and wording of the Constitution. In my opponents closing paragraphs, he once again attempted to assert that corporations are living beings. He stated that corporations are groups of people and should be given their rights. Yet, I already debunked these points in my previous arguments. Cells give life to humans, but humans don't give life to corporations. Corporations are not alive, and only exist as a legal fiction. They have no physical existence. They cannot think, feel, and cannot even be aware of their own existence. Cells, as explained in my last argument, cannot think, feel, and are not aware of their existence either. Humans, on the other hand, do have a physical existence, can think, can feel, and are aware that they are alive. Corporations have a closer relation to the mindless cells that compose humans than they do humans. Cells are not given human rights, and for all of the same reasons, corporations should not be given human rights. As for corporations being groups of people, I already debunked this idea in my previous argument. Groups of people, such as sports teams, are not given human rights. The humans that compose these groups are given rights, but those rights are not extended to the groups themselves. For all of the reasons talked about in this debate, corporations cannot and should not be given the same rights that humans have. They are not entities that are capable of thought, and only exist as a legal fiction. Human rights, as was described in America's founding documents, were made for humans. They do not need to be extended to the corporations that people work for, nor should they be given separately to corporations. I must thank my opponent for this debate. I hope that he enjoyed it as much as I did.