Legal Person
A Legal Person is a legal entity that can do the things a human person is usually able to do according to some legal code.
- AKA: Separate Legal Personality.
- Context:
- They can have access to access to tort and contract law in a manner similar to a person)
- They can be In:
- an Social Structure, such as Academia.
- an Social Movement, such as Politics.
- They can:
- Move Abstract Entity, e.g. the debate from politics to religion.
- Move Abstract Entity, e.g. money from one bank account to another.
- ...
- Example(s):
- a Natural Person.
- a Principal Agent.
- a Corporation.
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- a Human Child or a Human Corpse.
- a Non-Human Consciousness, such as a conscious machine.
- a Conscious Machine.
- See: Personhood, Legal Name, Legal Capacity, Lawsuit, Ownership, Juridical Person, Jurisdiction.
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. [1] 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.[1]
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".
- 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. [1] 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).
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lewis A. Kornhauser and W. Bentley MacLeod (June 2010). "Contracts between Legal Persons". National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w16049. S2CID 35849538. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
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)))))