RESEARCHPAPER

TOPIC &INSTRUCTIONS

The Fifth Amendment states that "Nopersonshall" suffer deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Implicit in "liberty" are an abundance of other rights be they specially protected by other amendments, derived from the natural rights we have as citizens, or otherwise created at law or by courts.

Two highly controversial Supreme Court cases, CitizensUnited v. Federal Election Commissionand Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, brought the conceptof a corporation's legal personhood to the forefront of America's consciousness.

While corporatepersonhood is not a new concept, just what rights that "personhood" should entail has recentlybeen catapulted from the pages of legal journals to our dinner table conversations, PresidentialDebate stages, and even our ballots.

Your task for this research paper is to answer the followingquestion:

Should corporations be considered to have legal personhood more or less equal to thatof a human?

Focus your research on legal and policy sources.

Your paper should provide an overview and interpretation of the legal foundation for why and to what extent corporations have legal personhood, your opinion supported by evidence for whether the current American approachto corporate personhood is correct, and how/what you would or would not change in the legal reasoning provided by the courts and legislatures for extending this concept to its current status.

Be creative, be thorough, andmost importantlyback up your argument with research and evidence!