Persons – Nature of Personality

A juristic person is things, the mass of assets, a community of human beings or an organization on which one can apply the legal law. Juristic personality is the capability to have legal rights and duties. The nature of legal personality is a prior need for legal capacity and ability of any legal person to amend rights and duties. For the Judicial person, one has to incorporate in accordance with the law. On the other hand for the natural person, one has to acquire legal personhood by birth. Let us discuss the nature of personality in detail.

Persons- Nature of Personality 

According to Salmond, “A person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and bound by legal duties.” There are two kinds of persons, Natural persons, and Legal persons.

Legal persons are juristic, fictitious or artificial persons and a natural person is a human being with a natural personality and as per law, is capable of rights and duties. A legal person has a real existence but its personality is fictitious, because such a thing does not exist in fact but which is deemed to exist in the eye of law.

Browse more Topics under Jurisprudence

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• Norms and Normative system
• Schools of Jurisprudence – Analytical Positivism
• Schools of Jurisprudence – Natural Law
• Schools of Jurisprudence – Historical School
• Schools of Jurisprudence – Sociological school
• Schools of Jurisprudence – PIL
• Schools of Jurisprudence – Concept of Dharma
• Purpose of Law – Justice
• Purpose of Law – Meaning and Kinds
• Purpose of Law – Justice and Law approaches of different school
• Purpose of Law – Power of Supreme Court in case of Article 147
• Purpose of Law – Critical studies
• Purpose of Law – Feminist Jurisprudence
• Sources of Law – Legislation
• Sources of Law – Concept of Stare Decisis
• Sources of Law – Customs
• Sources of Law – Juristic Writings
• Sources of Law – Agreements
• Legal Rights – Rights kinds
• Legal Rights – Right duty Correlation
• Status of Unborn, Minor, Lunatic drunk and dead person
• Corporate Personailty
• Persons – Dimensions of modern legal personality
• Legal personality of Non Human beings
• Kind of Possesions
• Kinds of Ownership
• Difference between Possesions and Ownership

Legal Personality/ Juristic Personality

We use the term “personality” for human beings alone because it is only them who can be the subject-matter of rights and duties, therefore of juristic personality. There are two essentials of a legal person such as corpus and the animus.

The corpus is the body into which the law infuses the animus on the other hand animus is the personality or the will of the person.

Nature of Legal Personality

Legal personality is an artificial creation of law. Entities under the law are capable of being parties to a legal relationship. A natural person is a human being and legal persons are artificial persons, such as a corporation. Law creates such corporation and gives certain legal rights and duties of a human being.

A legal personality is what provides a person or organization rights and responsibilities by the law. Usually, we automatically assume that Humans have a legal personality. This is so as such legal systems are built for the use of human beings. These days, the concept of legal personality is frequently a part of discussions about the rights or legal responsibility of the entities such as corporations that cannot be defined by a single person.

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Solved Example on Nature of Personality

Explain the theories of the nature of legal personality?

Ans.

1.Fiction Theory

This theory says that the personality of a corporation is different from that of its members. Thus any change in the membership will not affect the existence of the corporation.

2. Concession Theory

It is concerned with the Sovereignty of a State. It pre-supposes that the corporation as a legal person has great importance because it is recognized by the State or the law. According to it, a juristic person is merely a concession or creation of the state.

3. Group Personality Theory

This theory believes that every collective group has a real mind, a real will and a real power of action. So, a corporation has a real existence, irrespective of the fact whether it is recognized by the State or not.

4. The Bracket Theory or the Symbolist Theory

It states that the conception of corporate personality is important and is an economic device by which we can simplify the task of coordinating legal relations. Thus, it emphasizes that the law should look behind the entity to discover the real state of affairs.

5. Purpose Theory or the theory of Zweck Vermogen

It declares that only human beings can be a person and have rights. It also states that a juristic person is no person at all but merely a subject-less property meant for a particular purpose. There is ownership but no owner. Thus a juristic person is not constructed by a group of people but based on some object and purpose. Only living things can be the subject-matter of rights and duties.

6. Kelsen’s Theory of Legal Personality

According to it, there is no difference between the legal personality of a company and that of an individual. In the legal sense personality is only a technical personification of the norms with the assigned rights and duties.