ABSTRACT
"Constitutional personhood" refers to the status of an entity that is a "person" or part of "the people" within the meaning of the US Constitution. Despite the potential complexity of constitutional personhood issues and its status as a prerequisite for receiving any civil liberties protection, the Supreme Court has not examined the issue all that often. The litigants in a civil liberties case and the justices of the Supreme Court tend to assume the personhood of the parties at issue; the Court, for example, does not reaffirm the personhood of white male adult American citizens in every civil liberties case. As a practical matter, originalism is an attractive method of interpretation for answering personhood questions. In the Constitution, the terms "person," "persons," and "people" have varying meanings depending on the location of the words and the context in which they are used.
