Legal Personhood Topic Wordings Breakdown

Introduction

This piece is an overview of the potential resolutions for the 2022-23 college legal personhood topic. Sources are a combination of original research and work done by the topic committee. Keep in mind that most of this is opinion, not gospel.

Terms – Action (Vest vs. Expand)

Vest

The primary characteristic of vested rights or duties seems to be their permanence and immediacy of exercise.

Wex: “having an absolute right or title to something”

Black’s Law Dictionary: “Fixed; accrued; settled; absolute; complete. Having the character or given the rights of absolute ownership; not contingent; not subject to be defeated by a condition precedent.”

However, process CP debates aren’t unwinnable for the AFF. Some authors indicate that the term isn’t as strong as defined above, giving leeway for perm do the CP against delay and its ilk that were already behind from a community norms perspective.

Additionally, it is conducive to link uniqueness given court interpretations that vest needs to create a right the subject did not previously possess: “the term ‘vest’ connotes the conferring of a power or right that did not previously exist.”

There is a T subsets-style debate regarding the scope of rights that must be vested, with authors and Supreme Court Justices writing in the context of presidential powers arguing that it must be a broad grant of authority: “‘The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.’ … does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.”

Luckily, there are authors arguing that it can be partial: “legal documents and a database of founders’ papers indicate a range of usage, from “fully vested” to simply vested to “partly vested,” so that the “vesting” by itself would signify less completeness.” Additionally, this author clearly explains that the modern broad definition stems from the context of executive powers, while the older definitions in property law (the topic area) permit more partial interpretations.

Expand

Only resolution D uses the alternative wording of “expand[ing] the class of entities recognized as legal persons”.

Various court decisions defined “expand” to include more things in a definition, providing a clear brightline that entities granted personhood should not already have it in the status quo.

Authors have used the phrase “expanded the definition of legal personhood” in the context of the US granting more and more entities (corporations, trusts, states, etc.) legal personhood.

While this bodes well for link uniqueness, restricting the mechanism to personhood proper might mean the personhood PIC is competitive. However, a similar situation to rights/duties applies where the mechanism conferring personhood would be the same as trying to confer a similar status without the label, making PDCP viable but not quite as strong as on the other resolutions. The K links should apply more strongly, however.

One other miscellaneous note is that various authors and dictionaries define a hallmark of personhood in the abstract to be one that can “sue and be sued,” following interpretations of various international courts like India’s. This would mean that AFFs that impose liability on an entity would be topical, relevant for the AI subsection of the topic.

Other authors distinguish the lower threshold of personhood, “the power to institute legal actions, be recognised as suffering injury, and to receive relief in one’s own right,” (essentially rights) from a “‘high threshold'” that would include the ability to “sue and be sued”. This would potentially exclude AI affs, or at least make the permutation more viable for them?

Terms – Mechanism

Personhood

For those confused on why most of the resolutions are missing any explicit mention of a “legal person,” this stems from the intent to make the personhood PIC uncompetitive. This would confer rights/duties related to personhood without the title.

However, conferring rights and/or duties to an entity is technically both necessary and sufficient to make them a legal person, without grant an explicit title. Solaimon, citing Butterworths Australian Legal Dictionary, explains it succinctly: “the capability of enjoying rights and performing duties is the exclusive criterion of legal personality, and … any beings who possess this capability are legal persons, and conversely other beings who lack this capability are not such persons, regardless of whether the beings are human or not.”

American courts agree, as well as a broad assortment of legal dictionaries and legal theorists: “for purposes of establishing rights, the law presently categorizes entities in a simple, binary, “all-or-nothing” fashion. ‘Persons have rights, duties, and obligations; things do not.'”

Thus, the distinction between rights/duties and other resolutions is more about competition of the personhood PIC and negative links to topic words than the actual mechanism.

Rights

The various rights that could be conferred to a legal person are best catagorized by Kurki in their 2019 book, dividing it into active and passive incidents of personhood.

Passive incidents of legal personhood (rights that only legal persons have) include fundamental liberties (life, liberty, habeas corpus, etc.), special legal rights (standing, non-ownership, ability to be a victim/receive damages), and ability to own property.

In general, these are what are applied to nature, non-human animals, and future generations. They would potentially receive the right to be free from unsustainable environmental practices, domination, or harm respective.

Duties

Duties are most relevant for AI, where the concern is less the liberty of various algorithms and more accountability for their actions. As a result, list topics that exclude duties but include AI don’t make vary much sense.

Kurki broadly defines duties along the lines of active incidents of legal personhood, which includes legal liability and accountability.

Terms – Areas

Nature and Nonhuman Animals

These are the bread and butter of the topic, included in every resolution. Nature is almost any aspect of the natural world. Some authors argue that you can’t divide it into subsets, setting up the perennial time skew T debate. Nonhuman animals is generally defined extremely broadly, which include all living creatures that aren’t human. The resolutional wording is centered on nonhuman to avoid anthropocentrism.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is a broad term used to refer to a large variety of subfields. Some argue that it does not include machine learning techniques, while others argue that ML is within its umbrella. Likely affirmatives include criminal liability for AI, accountability for Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, and forms of control on emerging Artificial General Intelligence.

There is a debate in the literature regarding what if any single line of code be considered AI or whether to have personhood it needs to be sufficiently sophisticated. Broader definitions are likely ahead in these debates, however.

Future Generations

The main issue with this area is that most proposals in the literature associate the need for the rights of future generations with environmental sustainability, something largely included with the nature area.

However, affs like debt, social security, pension, nuclear waste, democratic, and risk priority reform are all possibilities that are distinct from nature, offering unique and interesting advantage ground.

There a few concerns with including this area, however. First, any article that happens to mention “future generations” could become an advantage/affirmative. These could end up being contrived or extremely niche, making it hard to predictably case neg. Second, including the ability to grant subset of humans personhood ends up flipping most topic DA link stories like the spillover DA. Third, it could end up including fetal personhood affs which is a potentially harmful affirmative area. Fourth, defining future generations is extremely difficult, with no clear literature consensus on what groups are included/excluded.

It’s not completely unlimited, however. Various authors argue that it excludes children, a group commonly lumped in with future generations in appeals for the need for environmental sustainability.

Overall, the area is promising but potentially too risky to include.

Terms – Agent

United States

“United States” as a term refers to the US in its entirety (FG, States, etc.). That means affirmatives would have to be nation-wide, providing good link ground.

There are some substantial benefits to this interpretation on this. First, the States CP is likely not competitive on a topic conspicuously lacking a fed key warrant. While there are various authors that argue US means federal alone, they’re either not in the context of “United States” alone, or from straight up conspiracy theorists. Even if solvency advocates indicate a specific affirmative is likely federal, the ambiguity of various definitions make PDCP relatively straightfoward. Second, individual state/subsets affs are not topical given the plethora of sources arguing that “US” constitutes collective action. While PICs out of individual states may or may not be competitive, it seems unclear what the net benefit for these would be. Third, K affs become significantly more “topical” given the ability to counterdefine the US favorably significantly more easily than USFG. This would hopefully deter framework debates in favor of substance.

United States Federal Government

USFG is not good. There are not enough fed key warrants to beat the states counterplan. For those worried about subsets/K affs, focus on precise definitions of US and other mechanism words.

Resolutions (Source)

Resolution A (Vest, Rights + Duties, AI + Nature + Animals, US)

This is the frontrunner for a narrow resolution. It includes the three largest areas, as well as having duties be an option for broader AI affs. US has the benefits mentioned above.

Resolution B (Vest, Rights, Nature + Animals, US)

This is essentially the first resolution without AI.The exclusion of “duties” is of lesser significance as the nature and nonhuman animal areas are largely focused on granting rights.

Resolution C (Vest, Rights, AI + Nature + Animals, US)

This is (in my opinion) a strictly worse version of the first resolution. In an attempt to limit the extent of AI affs, it instead creates a year of muddled T debates over whether or not specific AI proposals are “rights” or “duties”. If AI is to be included, it should be the full thing.

Resolution D (Expand the class, Broad, US)

This is the broadest version of the US-based resolution. Its inclusion of “legal personhood” in the wording along with general vagueness opens the door to miscellaneous aff mechanisms and potentially the personhood PIC, though as stated above it may not be competitive. It’s likely better for the K, however.

Resolution E (Vest, Rights + Duties, Broad, US)

The best version of a broad resolution. Includes all the potential categories except humans (fetuses, future gens, etc.) which solidifies a unifying link story for the topic while allowing even more creativity.

Resolution F (Vest, Rights, Future Gens + Nature + Animals, US)

The best version of a resolution that includes future generations. As stated above, advocates for future gens largely state their proposals in a frame of rights not duties so the term’s exclusion is not missed.

Resolution G (Vest, Rights + Duties, Broad, FG)

Best USFG resolution. “Not recognized as legal persons” is not too problematic given the FG restriction, as inherency concerns are largely limited to state court cases. However, this could certainly include fetal personhood (depending on what happens with Roe later this month…). That being said, for the reasons stated previously I consider all USFG-based resolutions unviable because of the dearth of fed key warrants.

Resolution H (Vest, Rights, Future Gens + Nature + Animals, FG)

Second FG resolution. Similar reasoning surrounding substance to resolution F.

Resolution I (Vest, Rights, AI + Future Gens + Nature + Animals, FG)

Probably just the worst resolution. Includes AI without duties which is frustrating, allowing weird T debates while still being an FG aff.

Summary

To summarize, here’s a table categorizing the various differences between the resolutions. Pick and choose whichever includes the aspects you want in a resolution!

My opinion? E = A = D > F >> B > C >>> G = H > I. Whatever you do, please don’t vote for a USFG-based resolution simply because you’re more comfortably with it. The risk that the States CP competes on an already likely neg-skewed topic is simply not worth it.