Legal Personality — KSLU Jurisprudence Notes

Legal Personality

A person in law is any entity capable of rights and duties — wider than “human”: natural persons and legal persons (corporations, the idol — Pramatha Nath Mullick — the State, even the river in recent experiments), while slaves historically and animals today hold none. Corporate-personality theories: fiction (Savigny — the corporation is a fictitious person the State creates), concession (personality exists only by State grant), realist (Gierke — the group is a real organism), bracket/symbolist (Ihering — a shorthand for the members), and purpose theory. The doctrine’s bite: Salomon v. Salomon & Co. (1897) — the company is distinct from its members — tempered by lifting the veil for fraud and evasion.