Examines what it means to be a person in the eyes of the law and the rhetorical framing that infuses our conception of living subjects, legal persons, nonpersons, and things. The line between human and subhuman, or person and thing, is given new urgency when limits of incarceration, torture, human trafficking, medical experimentation, and right to due process turn on new meanings of words like enemy combatant, IQ, underclass, market choice, race, terror, or illegal immigration. Who we consider a person, who we label less than fully endowed, are questions that inform some of the most urgent legal and political questions of our time. Explores legal opinions; historical documents; and texts in philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, literary criticism, and popular culture.