Legal-Fiction
The movement claim that statutes addressed to 'persons' bind only those who hold the corresponding legal status — leaving 'free men and women' outside the statute's reach — is foreclosed
The movement reads 'person' in statutes as a term of art that quietly excludes 'free men and women.' Statutory construction reads 'person' as a term of inclusion meant to broaden the statute's reach, not narrow it. Every court that has engaged the distinction has rejected the movement reading. The textual observation about statutory definitions is real; the doctrinal conclusion built on it is foreclosed.
Person / Man Distinction (Beers)
Byron Beers's central definitional move, recurring across Treatises 2, 7, 9, and 10: 'person' is a creature of civil law — a legal fiction whose status the sovereign confers and can revoke — while 'man' is the natural condition of human beings outside that taxonomy. The distinction is used to argue that statutes addressed to 'persons,' 'residents,' or 'individuals' bind only those who hold the corresponding legal status, not 'free men and women' operating under the natural order. The historical fact that older legal dictionaries treated 'person' as a status-bearing term is correct; the inference Beers builds on it is foreclosed by every statute that defines 'person' for its own purposes.