Publisher's Synopsis
This concerns what it means to be a person and the role the law plays in
bestowing the status of person. The purpose of this dissertation is to further our
understanding of how courts in the U.S., and especially the U.S. Supreme Court, have
defined "person" as a legal construct within Constitutional law. In order to achieve this,
court decisions concerning the personhood of key entities with a claim to personhood are
analyzed and compared in order to yield a more meaningful understanding of the word
"person." The entities studied include slaves, corporations, fetuses, and higher-order
animals.
