Legal Personality

A Legal Personality is a legal entity that can do the things a human person is usually able to do according to some legal code.

• AKA: Legal Entity, Persona Iuris, Legal Person, Separate Legal Personality.
• Context:
  • It can (typically) possess legal rights and legal obligations within a legal system.
  • It can (typically) enter into contractual agreements and seek legal redress.
  • It can (typically) access tort law and contract law in a manner similar to a natural person.
  • It can (typically) participate in legal actions through lawsuits.
  • It can (typically) be subject to law of obligations.
  • It can (often) be referenced in a Body of Law.
  • It can (often) engage in property ownership.
  • It can (often) exercise legal capacity within jurisdictional limits.
  • It can (often) be In a Social Structure, such as Academia.
  • It can (often) be In a Social Movement, such as Politics.
  • It can (often) participate in international law through treaty signing.
  • ...
  • It can range from being a Natural Person to being a Juridical Person, depending on its entity type.
  • It can range from being an Individual Legal Personality to being an Organizational Legal Personality, depending on its structural form.
  • It can range from being a Simple Legal Entity to being a Complex Legal Entity, depending on its organizational complexity.
  • ...
  • It can acquire personhood through birth for natural persons.
  • It can establish legal status through incorporation for juridical persons.
  • It can maintain separate identity from its constituent members.
  • ...
• Example(s):
  • Natural Persons, such as:
    • Individual Human Beings with legal rights and obligations.
  • Principal Agents, such as:
    • Authorized Representatives acting in legal capacity.
  • Juridical Persons, such as:
    • Corporations, such as:
      • Business Corporation (2024) for commercial activity.
      • Non-Profit Corporation (2024) for charitable purposes.
    • Government Entitys, such as:
      • State Agency (2024) for public administration.
      • Municipal Corporation (2024) for local governance.
    • International Organizations, such as:
      • United Nations (2024) for global cooperation.
  • Emerging Legal Persons, such as:
    • Environmental Entitys granted legal status in some jurisdictions.
    • Artificial Intelligence Systems under consideration for legal personality.
  • ...
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Human Childs or Human Corpses, which lack full legal capacity.
  • Non-Human Consciousnesss, such as conscious machines without legal recognition.
  • Dependent Agents, which lack autonomous legal status.
  • Unincorporated Entitys, which lack formal legal recognition.
  • Non-Legal Objects, which cannot hold rights or obligations.
  • Subsidiary Units without independent legal standing.
• See: Personhood, Legal Name, Legal Capacity, Lawsuit, Ownership, Juridical Person, Jurisdiction, Legal, Person, Organization, Legal Agreement, Institution, Law of Obligations, Natural Person, Personhood Measure, Corporate Personhood, Legal Framework, Juridical Entity.

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References

2024

• Perplexity
  • Legal personhood is a fundamental concept in law that designates entities that have legal rights and obligations. This concept is not limited to natural persons, i.e., human beings, but extends to various entities, allowing them to participate in the legal system in ways similar to individuals. Legal personhood is crucial for understanding how the law interacts with individuals, corporations, and other entities, influencing everything from contractual agreements to liability and rights protection.
  • Types of Legal Persons: Legal persons can be broadly categorized into two groups: natural persons and juridical (or artificial) persons.
    1. *Natural Persons: This category includes human beings. By virtue of being human, individuals automatically acquire certain rights and responsibilities under the law. These rights can include the right to own property, enter into contracts, and seek legal redress in courts.
    2. Juridical Persons: Juridical persons are non-human entities that the law recognizes as having rights and obligations. This category primarily includes corporations, but it can also encompass other entities like governments, non-profit organizations, and in some jurisdictions, natural features or sacred entities. Juridical personhood allows these entities to, for example, own property, sue and be sued, and enter into contracts.
  • Historical Development: The concept of legal personhood has evolved significantly over time. Historically, the notion was primarily concerned with natural persons. However, as societies and economies grew more complex, the need to grant certain legal capacities to collective entities became apparent. This led to the development of juridical personhood, particularly for corporations, which facilitated economic growth by enabling collective investment and limiting individual liability.
  • Legal Personhood and Corporations: Corporations are the most common type of juridical persons. The legal system treats corporations as separate entities from their shareholders, directors, and employees. This separation is crucial for various aspects of business operations, including liability, taxation, and governance. Corporate personhood has been a contentious issue, especially in contexts like political campaign financing, where the extent of rights that corporations should enjoy compared to natural persons is debated.
  • Controversies and Expansions: Legal personhood remains a dynamic and sometimes controversial area of law. Debates often center on the extent of rights and protections that should be afforded to juridical persons, especially corporations. Additionally, there are ongoing discussions about extending legal personhood to animals and artificial intelligence (AI). These debates reflect changing societal values and technological advancements, challenging traditional legal frameworks to adapt and accommodate new types of entities.
  • Conclusion: Legal personhood is a foundational concept in law that recognizes entities as bearers of rights and obligations. While natural persons automatically acquire legal personhood, juridical persons are granted such status by the law to facilitate their participation in legal, economic, and social activities. As society evolves, the concept of legal personhood continues to expand and adapt, reflecting broader changes in values, technology, and the economy.
  • Citations:

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10376032/
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43545-023-00667-x
[3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/legal-personhood/EB28AB0B045936DBDAA1DF2D20E923A0
[4] https://academic.oup.com/book/35026/chapter/298856312
[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2022/11/21/legal-personhood-for-ai-is-taking-a-sneaky-path-that-makes-ai-law-and-ai-ethics-very-nervous-indeed/?sh=58d95c60f48a
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
[7] https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1373&context=jbtl
[8] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2023/12/04/taking-personhood-seriously-in-corporate-law/
[9] https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol69/iss2/3/
[10] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/are-corporations-people
[11] https://academic.oup.com/book/33735/chapter/288378772
[12] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/we-the-people/we-the-people-corporations/
[13] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2021.789327/full
[14] https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution
[15] https://famous-trials.com/animalrights/2600-the-case-for-animal-personhood
[16] https://congressionalsportsmen.org/policy/animal-personhood/
[17] https://www.animallaw.info/article/sacrificing-sacrifice-animals-legal-personhood-animals-status-animals-property-and-presumed
[18] https://aldf.org/issue/animals-legal-status/
[19] https://medicine.missouri.edu/centers-institutes-labs/health-ethics/faq/personhood

2015

• (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/legal_personality Retrieved:2015-2-21.
  • To have legal personality means to be capable of having legal rights and obligations within a certain legal system, such as to enter into contracts, sue, and be sued. Legal personality is a prerequisite to legal capacity, the ability of any legal person to amend (enter into, transfer, etc.) rights and obligations. In international law, consequently, legal personality is a prerequisite for an international organization to be able to sign international treaties in its own name. Legal persons (lat. persona iuris) are of two kinds: natural persons (also called physical persons) – people – and juridical persons (also called juridic, juristic, artificial, or fictitious persons, lat. persona ficta) – groups of people, such as corporations, which are treated by law as if they were persons. While people acquire legal personhood when they are born, juridical persons do so when they are incorporated in accordance with law.

References

2023

• (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person Retrieved:2023-8-3.
  • In law, a legal person is any person or 'thing' (less ambiguously, any legal entity) that can do the things a human person is usually able to do in law – such as enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own property, and so on. The reason for the term "legal person" is that some legal persons are not people: companies and corporations are "persons" legally speaking (they can legally do most of the things an ordinary person can do), but they are not people in a literal sense (human beings).

    There are therefore two kinds of legal entities: human and non-human. In law, a human person is called a natural person (sometimes also a physical person), and a non-human person is called a juridical person (sometimes also a juridic, juristic, artificial, legal, or fictitious person, ).

    Juridical persons are entities such as corporations, firms (in some jurisdictions), and many government agencies. They are treated in law as if they were persons.

    While natural persons acquire legal personality "naturally", simply by being born (or before that, in some jurisdictions), juridical persons must have legal personality conferred on them by some "unnatural", legal process, and it is for this reason that they are sometimes called "artificial" persons. In the most common case (incorporating a business), legal personality is usually acquired by registration with a government agency set up for the purpose. In other cases it may be by primary legislation: an example is the Charity Commission in the UK. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 advocates for the provision of legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030 as part of the 2030 Agenda.

    As legal personality is a prerequisite to legal capacity (the ability of any legal person to amend – i.e. enter into, transfer, etc. – rights and obligations), it is a prerequisite for an international organization to be able to sign international treaties in its own name.

    The term "legal person" can be ambiguous because it is often used as a synonym of terms that refer only to non-human legal entities, specifically in contradistinction to "natural person".

2015

• (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_personality Retrieved:2015-7-6.
  • To have legal personality means to be capable of having legal rights and obligations within a certain legal system, such as entering into contracts, suing, and being sued. Legal personality is a prerequisite to legal capacity, the ability of any legal person to amend (enter into, transfer, etc.) rights and obligations. ...

2009

• (ISI, 2009) ⇒ http://isi.edu/~hobbs/bgt-person.text
  • QUOTE: Finally we arrive at people. The theories of Part C are intended to some extent to apply to other kinds of agents than just people, such as robots and organizations, and some aspects of the cognitive theories, such as goals, plans, and beliefs, we would expect to find in any cognitive agent in some form. But many aspects are idiosyncratic to people -- accidents of evolution, in a sense. For example, there is probably no reason a robot or an organization should be thought of as having emotions. In Part C, when we are talking about aspects of cognition that apply to all cognitive agents, we will call the agent simply an "agent". When we are talking about particularities of people, we will condition the axioms on the relevant arguments being persons.
  • A person is a kind of agent.
    • (1) (forall (p) (if (person p)(agent p)))
  • A person is also a kind of physical object.
    • (2) (forall (p) (if (person p)(physobj p)))
  • A person has a body and a mind.
    • (3) (forall (p) (if (person p) (exists (b m)(and (body b p)(mind m p)))))

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