Who is a person?

Great Debates
1

This question has recently surfaced in the media.

Who is a person?

A woman or non-white has not always been recognized as a ‘person’. They have been denied equal right of liberty and justice by Constitution and law. Yet, now there are both in the presidential race (running against the old white male guard I might add).

Women and gays and other sinners are still not recognized as ‘persons’ by law.
Women and gays and other sinners are still denied their retained rights of liberty and justice.

Who would deny this?
Who would defend this?

Peace
rwj

2

Could you define what you mean by: sinners? After that I think I can discuss.

3

It seems a bit odd to say that women were not considered “persons”/“people”. Surely, even when women, say, lacked voting rights, the natural inclination was still thoroughly to say, say, of a room with a woman and two men in it, “There are three people in that room” rather than “There are two people in that room”. A woman was a person; sure, a person who lacked many of the rights that other people had, but I don’t see why you would tie those to the word “person” to begin with.

4

[QUOTE=rwjefferson]
A woman or non-white has not always been recognized as a ‘person’. They have been denied equal right of liberty and justice by Constitution and law.
[/QUOTE]

Yet even then they were legally considered “persons,” rather than, say, animals or inanimate objects. (Slaves were persons and chattel; the Constitution, in the three-fifths compromise, refers to them as “other persons,” as distinct from free persons.)

5

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Yet even then they were legally considered “persons,” rather than, say, animals or inanimate objects.
[/QUOTE]
As I recall, women were regarded as legally incompetent in many cases, and had to have a man make all important decisions for them; like a child. While they might have been regarded as technically people, they were regardless as lesser people. “Woman is the lesser man” and all that; more like being regarded as between men and animals.

6

Interestingly, it was not until 1929 that women were legally recognized as “persons” in Canada. Before that, common law held that “Women are persons in matters of pains and penalties, but are not persons in matters of rights and privileges.”

A summary

The case was brought by The Famous Five

7

It has? A link would be nice, so we can understand the context. I mean, surely this isn’t about abortion, is it?

8

Done forget that in the states a corporation is legaly equivilant to a person. Does that muddy the waters enough?

9

[QUOTE=John Mace]
It has? A link would be nice, so we can understand the context. I mean, surely this isn’t about abortion, is it?
[/QUOTE]
It’s one of The Thirteen American Arguments – author Howard Fineman has been making the rounds plugging his new book. I’ve seen him on Olbermann & the Daily Show this week.

10

Anyone who can say they are a person, of their own volition, is a person. Pretty simple, as I see it.

11

[QUOTE=Eben]
Done forget that in the states a corporation is legaly equivilant to a person.
[/QUOTE]

Well, not for all purposes. A corporation can own property, but only “natural persons” can vote.

12

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
Anyone who can say they are a person, of their own volition, is a person. Pretty simple, as I see it.
[/QUOTE]

Does that mean mentally disabled persons are not persons? What about newborn infants, mindless and helpless as they (temporarily) are?

13

I admit, I was thinking more of artificial intelligences, animals, clones, and aliens, rather than medical issues. If one is rather strict, someone who is asleep is not a person by my rule.

But that would be stupid, wouldn’t it?

I submit the word ‘temporarily’ would be important in this, but I’m not sure about the word ‘potentially’. Because, potentially, my PC could spontaneously organize into a very slow artificial lifeform.

So, I submit that ‘temporary incapacitation shall not be considered a handicap in this matter.’

As for the grossly mentally disabled, yes, Ms. Schaivo was not considered a ‘person’ anymore. Anyone who has some amount of self-awareness counts.

Of course, then, one has to define the separation between ‘human’ and ‘cow’. Care to refine it further?

14

[QUOTE=John Mace]
I mean, surely this isn’t about abortion, is it?
[/QUOTE]
If I had to guess, knowing the OP’s history in Great Debates, it is probably about liberty and vice.

But seriously: saying that women, gays and “sinners” (?!?) are not recognized by law as people is incorrect. The OP will have to cough up a cite for whatever he means by this.

It appears, in any case, that the concept of person is being twisted to conform to multiple meanings. In one sense, everybody alive in this country is a person: if I assault someone, I’d still be locked up if I argued, “Your Honor, I didn’t assault a person; I assaulted a non-person gay woman sinner!”

However, personhood doesn’t mean that every aspect of the person is recognized or protected by law. We may have laws against racial and religious discrimination, but just because we don’t (yet) have laws against discrimination against homosexuals doesn’t mean that homosexuals aren’t persons. Those distinctions drawn in law do not reflect on personhood, no more than a 19 year old shouldn’t be considered a non-person because he can’t buy a bottle of liquor. One can also be a person and not have all of one’s faculties about him. Simply because an Alzheimer’s patient cannot make decisions about his life, doesn’t make him not a person. It makes him a person who must be assisted for his own good.

15

Do you have a cite for that? I believe that Ms. Schaivo was still considered a person with rights whose expressed wishes were to be followed.

16

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
If I had to guess, knowing the OP’s history in Great Debates, it is probably about liberty and vice.

But seriously: saying that women, gays and “sinners” (?!?) are not recognized by law as people is incorrect. The OP will have to cough up a cite for whatever he means by this.

It appears, in any case, that the concept of person is being twisted to conform to multiple meanings. In one sense, everybody alive in this country is a person: if I assault someone, I’d still be locked up if I argued, “Your Honor, I didn’t assault a person; I assaulted a non-person gay woman sinner!”

However, personhood doesn’t mean that every aspect of the person is recognized or protected by law. We may have laws against racial and religious discrimination, but just because we don’t (yet) have laws against discrimination against homosexuals doesn’t mean that homosexuals aren’t persons. Those distinctions drawn in law do not reflect on personhood, no more than a 19 year old shouldn’t be considered a non-person because he can’t buy a bottle of liquor. One can also be a person and not have all of one’s faculties about him. Simply because an Alzheimer’s patient cannot make decisions about his life, doesn’t make him not a person. It makes him a person who must be assisted for his own good.
[/QUOTE]

I think this is an important point. Equating the protections of “personhood” in law with the complete panoply of legal rights and privileges afforded competent non-felonious adults and other “legal persons” is a case of invalid transference.

I know a man who is four legal people – his identity as a U.S. and New York citizen, and sole proprietor of three Arizona LLCs which may act independently of him, so far as legal rights and liabilities go, in commercial ventures. All four may enter into legal contracts. On the other hand, one of the most level-headed, wisest people I know is legally barred from entering into a contract without the consent of another. And this makes sense because he’s 12 years old. He’s being protected from being defrauded owing to his youth, inexperience, and naivete.

Incompetent persons, e.g., the mentally disabled or small children, remain persons under the law; they simply need someone to act in a capacity they cannot to preserve their rights.

17

There was a staff report on corporate personhood a few years ago. Insipired me to do more research and write a paper for school.

The fourteenth ammendment doesn’t declare corporations ‘persons’, which they’ve been called for a long time. It does, however, quietly refuse apply itself just to ‘natural person’, and in so doing extends all of its provisions to corporations. Thus, corporations benefit from first ammendment rights and many others.

The history of this is that the wording was apparently sneaked into the ammendment, and many signers perhaps didn’t understand its implications. At a trial several years after signing, a corporation called upon two witnesses, who were senators at the time of drafting, who basically said, “yeah, we’d put that in and that’s what it now implies, suckas.” After that, corporate personhood was used to throw down a lot of anti-trust legislation. Eventually this eased up (by which point anti-trust legislation was mainly used to battle unions). Ain’t our legal system great?

18

Okay, I don’t consider Ms. Schaivo a person anymore, due to the specific nature of her injuries. I don’t consider corpses persons, either.

19

[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
Could you define what you mean by: sinners? After that I think I can discuss.
[/QUOTE]
For this debate, let us consider a sin as a transgression, especially against god. A sinner is one transgresses.

What do you consider a sinner?

20

[QUOTE=Indistinguishable (and others)]
It seems a bit odd to say that women were not considered “persons”/“people”.
[/QUOTE]
I am simply repeating the way the word was used. The concept of ‘person’ for this news report referred to a ‘first class citizen’ as opposed to a ‘second class citizen’ e.g. slaves and women were not equal.

[QUOTE=John Mace]
It has? A link would be nice, so we can understand the context.
[/QUOTE]

I saw this while surfing television news and have no further links. The context was that Obama opened his campaign in Springfield, Illinois with a reference that Lincoln expanded the legal concept of ‘person’ (first class citizen) to include all races.

Peace
rwj