Why the Personhood debate may be critical to the debate over cognitive autonomy.
Published June 12, 2025.
What happens when your body is expendable, but your memories live on? In Bong Joon-ho’s 2025 sci-fi satire Mickey 17, Robert Pattinson plays a man whose body is cloned and reprinted after each death—a human copy used for the dangerous labor no one else will accept. As the line between original and clone blurs, the story exposes something more than science fiction: the terrifying consequences of denying personhood based on utility, identity, or origin.
This dystopian narrative—laced with dark comedy and sharp political critique—raises serious questions that echo far beyond the confines of a spaceship. Can a society that treats sentient beings as property ever claim to respect human dignity? How do we protect autonomy in a world of emerging AI, reproductive technology, and surveillance? And most urgently: who does the law recognize as a person?
Under the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) agreements—particularly the 2023 AI and Digital Replication provisions—actors now possess contractual rights over the use of their voice, likeness, and digital replicas, including limitations on synthetic performance created through CGI and AI.
These amendments require informed consent and compensation when an actor’s image is used posthumously or algorithmically re-created, reflecting a growing recognition that identity and expression are legally protectable. In stark contrast, there are no enforceable legal protections for individuals whose memories, behavioral patterns, or neural data are extracted through machine learning or speculative bioengineering such as cloning.
Actors can negotiate rights in union contracts, ordinary individuals—especially children or marginalized communities—face no clear legal remedy when their cognitive or reproductive identity is used without consent. This discrepancy highlights the urgent need to expand cognitive liberty and bodily autonomy frameworks, especially as artificial intelligence blurs the boundary between selfhood and simulation, and fiction like Mickey 17 edges closer to reality.
Under California law, the term “person” is broadly defined in both civil and criminal contexts:
Civil Code § 14:
“The word ‘person’ includes a corporation as well as a natural person.”
This means that both natural persons (human beings) and legal persons (such as corporations, partnerships, and associations) are recognized as having legal rights and obligations.
Penal Code § 7 (1):
“The word ‘person’ includes a corporation as well as a natural person.”
This applies similarly in criminal statutes.
What Is “Personhood” Under the Law?
Personhood refers to legal recognition of an entity (usually a human being) as a “person” entitled to legal rights and subject to legal responsibilities. The concept of personhood is critical because only “persons” can:
Own property and enter into contracts. Persons can sue and be sued, receive constitutional protections, and be held criminally or civilly liable.
The Significance of Using the Term “Person”
Referring to someone as a “person” triggers the full scope of legal protections—constitutional, statutory, and procedural. For instance, the California Constitution and U.S. Constitution protect “persons” against unreasonable searches and seizures, guarantee due process, and prohibit cruel and unusual punishment.
Inclusion of Corporate and Artificial Entities
The use of “persons” can expand legal rights to non-human entities such as: Corporations (e.g., Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)) Limited liability companies Municipalities
Exclusion and Moral/Political Implications
Defining or denying personhood can exclude groups from rights, historically, including:
Slaves (pre–Civil War)
Women (pre–suffrage and civil rights eras)
Unborn fetuses (subject of abortion debates)
Immigrants or detainees (in surveillance and detention law)
Animals (typically not recognized as legal persons)
AI systems (currently not legal persons, though debated).
Reproductive and Privacy Rights
The term “persons” in laws like the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) and HIPAA affects who has medical privacy rights—including over reproductive data, embryos, or biometric material.
The concept of personhood is controversial as to its application in Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113 (1973)) and its progeny—and post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022). The legal landscape around fetal personhood is evolving.
Constitutional and Human Rights Dimensions
Due Process Clause (U.S. Const. Amend. V and XIV): Protects “persons” from government deprivations of life, liberty, or property without due process.
The Equal Protection Clause (14th Amendment), guarantees equal protection to “persons” within the state’s jurisdiction.
California’s Constitution Article I, Recognizes inalienable rights of “all people,” reinforcing personal liberty and privacy protections under state law.
Emerging Issues: AI, Neural Rights, and Personhood and Cognitive Autonomy
California has yet to extend personhood to AI entities or neural digital avatars, but proposals elsewhere (e.g., Chile’s Neural Rights law) signal future battles over personhood in cognitive autonomy.
Legal scholars debate whether neural data or brain-computer interface systems should be granted protections similar to those given to persons.
Conclusion
In California and U.S. law, the term “persons” is not just a grammatical choice—it is a legal threshold for rights, obligations, protections, and identity. It determines who can participate in civil society and who is shielded under the Constitution, privacy laws, and tort protections.
Scholars and international advocates have proposed the recognition of cognitive liberty and neural privacy as fundamental rights—on par with freedom of speech and protection against self-incrimination.
Chile became the first country to enshrine neuro-rights in its constitution in 2021, affirming the right to mental integrity and control over neural data.
In the U.S., however, constitutional protections remain fragmented. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments offer limited safeguards against invasive surveillance or forced self-disclosure, but they have yet to be fully tested in the context of machine learning trained on human cognition, AI-generated replicas, or unconsented memory simulation.
As reproductive technologies like IVF and neural data capture evolve alongside predictive behavioral modeling, lawmakers must move beyond property- or contract-based approaches to explicitly recognize mental autonomy and informational self-determination as inviolable. Without such protections, the line between citizen and subject—as seen in both Mickey 17 and real-world policy gaps—risks being erased by machines that replicate not just our likeness, but our very thoughts.
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This article was drafted with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI, and reviewed and edited by the author. All conclusions, legal interpretations, and claims reflect the author’s own analysis and voice.
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