This chapter examines corporate legal personhood as well as the legal status of collectivities in... more This chapter examines corporate legal personhood as well as the legal status of collectivities in general. It exposes a number of problems the Orthodox View has as regards the rights and duties of collectivities. For instance, many constitutions and human rights documents recognize the rights of minorities, but minorities are regardless generally not taken to be corporations or legal persons. The chapter offers a different explanation of corporations. It applies social ontology to argue that even non-incorporated group agents can hold legal rights. Regardless, such groups are not legal persons. What distinguishes corporations from other groups is not that they hold rights, but rather that they are endowed with a significant number of the incidents of legal personhood: they can own property, sue, and so on. The chapter concludes by considering whether collectives that are not group agents could be legal persons.
Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought. It has recently become highl... more Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought. It has recently become highly topical, underpinning contemporary debates over the legal status of animals, corporations, foetuses, natural objects, and artificial intelligences. The notion is furthermore crucial in explaining the historical legal statuses of women and slaves. Rather than addressing who or what should be a legal person, this book examines the concept itself. The book consists of an Introduction and three parts. The Introduction presents the Western doctrine of legal personhood, the relevant terms and concepts, and the methodology employed in the book. Part I shows, first, how legal personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights and/or duties. It then subjects this understanding of legal personhood to a rigorous scrutiny, exposing numerous problems afflicting the view. Part II provides a completely new, general theory of legal personhood, arguing that legal personhood ...
This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, App... more This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, which denied habeas corpus from the chimpanzee Tommy. The conclusion of the judgment is not challenged, but rather its underlying premise: that legal personhood could be straightforwardly equated with right-holding and/or duty-bearing. The Tommy case was not about granting the first legal right to the chimpanzee, because it already holds numerous rights. Neither can it be claimed that legal personhood concerns the capacity to be a party in legal relations, as nonpersons participate in Hohfeldian legal relations, too. The essay argues that legal personhood should rather be understood as being encompassed in the specific legal institutions that distinguish legal persons from nonpersons.
A relatively recent form of animal activism is lawsuits intended to declare some animals as legal... more A relatively recent form of animal activism is lawsuits intended to declare some animals as legal persons. A pioneer of this approach is the U.S.-based Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). This organization’s primary strategy has been to invoke the writ of habeas corpus, which protects the right to personal freedom of “persons.” The article criticizes the notion of legal personhood that the NhRP is employing and explains how an alternative understanding of legal personhood could perhaps make nonhuman rights more palatable for courts.
This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on 'Bent... more This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on 'Bentham's test', which was devised by Matthew Kramer to limit the expansiveness of the interest theory. According to the test, a party holds a right correlative to a duty only if that party stands to undergo a development that is typically detrimental if the duty is breached. The article shows how the entire interest theory can be reformulated in terms of the test. The article then focuses on a further strength of the interest theory, brought to the fore by the new formulation. In any Western legal system, the tortious maltreatment of a child or a mentally disabled individual results in a compensatory duty. The interest theory can account for such duties in a simple and elegant way. The will theory, on the other hand, struggles to explain such compensatory duties unless it abandons some of its main tenets.
Competences are exercised through acts-in-the-law (eg signing a contract). The chapter offers a r... more Competences are exercised through acts-in-the-law (eg signing a contract). The chapter offers a rigorous definition of competence and compares it with the Hohfeldian category of power. In addition, the paper distinguishes between dependent and independent competences. For instance, children can typically enter into some contracts. However, if the contract can be retroactively cancelled by a child's guardian, the relevant competence is of the dependent type.
The Article analyzes the notion of legal " thinghood " in the context of the person–thing bifurca... more The Article analyzes the notion of legal " thinghood " in the context of the person–thing bifurcation. In legal scholarship, there are numerous assumptions pertaining to this definition that are often not spelled out. In addition, one's chosen definition of " thing " is often simply taken to be the correct one. The Article scrutinizes these assumptions and definitions. First, a brief history of the bifurcation is offered. Second, three possible definitions of " legal thing " are examined: Things as nonpersons, things as rights and duties, and things as property. The first two definitions are rejected as not being very interesting or serving any heuristic function. Conversely, understanding legal things as property is meaningful, useful, and helps to understand what it means to say that animals are legally things. Defining things as property has certain rather important implications, which are analyzed at the end of the Article. For instance, not everything needs to be either a person or a thing: The historical institution of outlawry involved treating individuals neither as legal persons nor as legal things. One must conclude that the person–thing bifurcation is less fundamental than is often assumed.
This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, App... more This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, which denied habeas corpus from the chimpanzee Tommy. The conclusion of the judgment is not challenged, but rather its underlying premise: that legal personhood could be straightforwardly equated with right-holding and/or duty-bearing. The Tommy case was not about granting the first legal right to the chimpanzee, because it already holds numerous rights. Neither can it be claimed that legal personhood concerns the capacity to be a party in legal relations, as nonpersons participate in Hohfeldian legal relations, too. The essay argues that legal personhood should rather be understood as being encompassed in the specific legal institutions that distinguish legal persons from nonpersons.
Can nature or natural objects hold rights or be legal persons? Accounts arguing for the legal per... more Can nature or natural objects hold rights or be legal persons? Accounts arguing for the legal personhood of natural objects often rely on what is termed the Anything-Goes Approach: more or less any entity can be a legal person, if the legislator or some other appropriate legal actor declares the entity a legal person. The article scrutinizes two arguments that are used to justify the Anything-Goes Approach. According to the Deference Argument, it is up to the legal authorities to determine which entities can be legal persons. Therefore, more or less anything can be a legal person. According to the Corporate Argument, if the law can treat entities like corporations as legal persons, then surely it can treat virtually any entity as a legal person. The article argues that neither of these arguments work, and that natural objects in fact likely cannot be legal persons. Instead, legal arrangements purporting to extend legal personhood to natural objects should be analyzed, for instance, as foundations with collective beneficiaries.
To be presented at Workshop in Honour of Matthew Kramer
The Whanganui River has recently been declared a legal person and a right-holder according to New... more The Whanganui River has recently been declared a legal person and a right-holder according to New Zealand legislation. However, many theorists propounding the interest theory of rights, such as Matthew Kramer and Joseph Raz, would deny that rivers can hold rights. Their denial is based on moral considerations: rivers are not morally ultimately valuable and therefore not capable of holding rights. Both Kramer and Raz are also legal positivists, subscribing to the separability of law and morality. How can they at the same time insist on this separability and deny legal rights to rivers on moral grounds? The essay analyses this tension between legal positivism and the interest theory, focusing on Kramer's views. It concludes that, though the alliance is uneasy, it is ultimately sustainable.
Who, or what, is a 'person' according to the law? How did this understanding of personhood come a... more Who, or what, is a 'person' according to the law? How did this understanding of personhood come about? In the twenty-first century, environmentalism, animal rights, artificial intelligence, and corporate personhood have compelled us to consider these questions once again. Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought and A Theory of Legal Personhood seeks to go beyond contemporary debates, challenging our very understanding of legal personhood itself.
Drawing on extensive research, scholarship, legislation, and court cases from around the globe, this book offers readers — with or without previous knowledge — new insights into legal personhood. It scrutinizes how personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights. It then posits that a better understanding of legal personhood is as a cluster property. Finally, it applies this new theory to explain and structure the numerous debates surrounding legal personhood.
This chapter examines corporate legal personhood as well as the legal status of collectivities in... more This chapter examines corporate legal personhood as well as the legal status of collectivities in general. It exposes a number of problems the Orthodox View has as regards the rights and duties of collectivities. For instance, many constitutions and human rights documents recognize the rights of minorities, but minorities are regardless generally not taken to be corporations or legal persons. The chapter offers a different explanation of corporations. It applies social ontology to argue that even non-incorporated group agents can hold legal rights. Regardless, such groups are not legal persons. What distinguishes corporations from other groups is not that they hold rights, but rather that they are endowed with a significant number of the incidents of legal personhood: they can own property, sue, and so on. The chapter concludes by considering whether collectives that are not group agents could be legal persons.
Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought. It has recently become highl... more Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought. It has recently become highly topical, underpinning contemporary debates over the legal status of animals, corporations, foetuses, natural objects, and artificial intelligences. The notion is furthermore crucial in explaining the historical legal statuses of women and slaves. Rather than addressing who or what should be a legal person, this book examines the concept itself. The book consists of an Introduction and three parts. The Introduction presents the Western doctrine of legal personhood, the relevant terms and concepts, and the methodology employed in the book. Part I shows, first, how legal personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights and/or duties. It then subjects this understanding of legal personhood to a rigorous scrutiny, exposing numerous problems afflicting the view. Part II provides a completely new, general theory of legal personhood, arguing that legal personhood ...
This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, App... more This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, which denied habeas corpus from the chimpanzee Tommy. The conclusion of the judgment is not challenged, but rather its underlying premise: that legal personhood could be straightforwardly equated with right-holding and/or duty-bearing. The Tommy case was not about granting the first legal right to the chimpanzee, because it already holds numerous rights. Neither can it be claimed that legal personhood concerns the capacity to be a party in legal relations, as nonpersons participate in Hohfeldian legal relations, too. The essay argues that legal personhood should rather be understood as being encompassed in the specific legal institutions that distinguish legal persons from nonpersons.
A relatively recent form of animal activism is lawsuits intended to declare some animals as legal... more A relatively recent form of animal activism is lawsuits intended to declare some animals as legal persons. A pioneer of this approach is the U.S.-based Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). This organization’s primary strategy has been to invoke the writ of habeas corpus, which protects the right to personal freedom of “persons.” The article criticizes the notion of legal personhood that the NhRP is employing and explains how an alternative understanding of legal personhood could perhaps make nonhuman rights more palatable for courts.
This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on 'Bent... more This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on 'Bentham's test', which was devised by Matthew Kramer to limit the expansiveness of the interest theory. According to the test, a party holds a right correlative to a duty only if that party stands to undergo a development that is typically detrimental if the duty is breached. The article shows how the entire interest theory can be reformulated in terms of the test. The article then focuses on a further strength of the interest theory, brought to the fore by the new formulation. In any Western legal system, the tortious maltreatment of a child or a mentally disabled individual results in a compensatory duty. The interest theory can account for such duties in a simple and elegant way. The will theory, on the other hand, struggles to explain such compensatory duties unless it abandons some of its main tenets.
Competences are exercised through acts-in-the-law (eg signing a contract). The chapter offers a r... more Competences are exercised through acts-in-the-law (eg signing a contract). The chapter offers a rigorous definition of competence and compares it with the Hohfeldian category of power. In addition, the paper distinguishes between dependent and independent competences. For instance, children can typically enter into some contracts. However, if the contract can be retroactively cancelled by a child's guardian, the relevant competence is of the dependent type.
The Article analyzes the notion of legal " thinghood " in the context of the person–thing bifurca... more The Article analyzes the notion of legal " thinghood " in the context of the person–thing bifurcation. In legal scholarship, there are numerous assumptions pertaining to this definition that are often not spelled out. In addition, one's chosen definition of " thing " is often simply taken to be the correct one. The Article scrutinizes these assumptions and definitions. First, a brief history of the bifurcation is offered. Second, three possible definitions of " legal thing " are examined: Things as nonpersons, things as rights and duties, and things as property. The first two definitions are rejected as not being very interesting or serving any heuristic function. Conversely, understanding legal things as property is meaningful, useful, and helps to understand what it means to say that animals are legally things. Defining things as property has certain rather important implications, which are analyzed at the end of the Article. For instance, not everything needs to be either a person or a thing: The historical institution of outlawry involved treating individuals neither as legal persons nor as legal things. One must conclude that the person–thing bifurcation is less fundamental than is often assumed.
This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, App... more This essay takes as its starting point a recent judgment by the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, which denied habeas corpus from the chimpanzee Tommy. The conclusion of the judgment is not challenged, but rather its underlying premise: that legal personhood could be straightforwardly equated with right-holding and/or duty-bearing. The Tommy case was not about granting the first legal right to the chimpanzee, because it already holds numerous rights. Neither can it be claimed that legal personhood concerns the capacity to be a party in legal relations, as nonpersons participate in Hohfeldian legal relations, too. The essay argues that legal personhood should rather be understood as being encompassed in the specific legal institutions that distinguish legal persons from nonpersons.
Can nature or natural objects hold rights or be legal persons? Accounts arguing for the legal per... more Can nature or natural objects hold rights or be legal persons? Accounts arguing for the legal personhood of natural objects often rely on what is termed the Anything-Goes Approach: more or less any entity can be a legal person, if the legislator or some other appropriate legal actor declares the entity a legal person. The article scrutinizes two arguments that are used to justify the Anything-Goes Approach. According to the Deference Argument, it is up to the legal authorities to determine which entities can be legal persons. Therefore, more or less anything can be a legal person. According to the Corporate Argument, if the law can treat entities like corporations as legal persons, then surely it can treat virtually any entity as a legal person. The article argues that neither of these arguments work, and that natural objects in fact likely cannot be legal persons. Instead, legal arrangements purporting to extend legal personhood to natural objects should be analyzed, for instance, as foundations with collective beneficiaries.
To be presented at Workshop in Honour of Matthew Kramer
The Whanganui River has recently been declared a legal person and a right-holder according to New... more The Whanganui River has recently been declared a legal person and a right-holder according to New Zealand legislation. However, many theorists propounding the interest theory of rights, such as Matthew Kramer and Joseph Raz, would deny that rivers can hold rights. Their denial is based on moral considerations: rivers are not morally ultimately valuable and therefore not capable of holding rights. Both Kramer and Raz are also legal positivists, subscribing to the separability of law and morality. How can they at the same time insist on this separability and deny legal rights to rivers on moral grounds? The essay analyses this tension between legal positivism and the interest theory, focusing on Kramer's views. It concludes that, though the alliance is uneasy, it is ultimately sustainable.
Who, or what, is a 'person' according to the law? How did this understanding of personhood come a... more Who, or what, is a 'person' according to the law? How did this understanding of personhood come about? In the twenty-first century, environmentalism, animal rights, artificial intelligence, and corporate personhood have compelled us to consider these questions once again. Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought and A Theory of Legal Personhood seeks to go beyond contemporary debates, challenging our very understanding of legal personhood itself.
Drawing on extensive research, scholarship, legislation, and court cases from around the globe, this book offers readers — with or without previous knowledge — new insights into legal personhood. It scrutinizes how personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights. It then posits that a better understanding of legal personhood is as a cluster property. Finally, it applies this new theory to explain and structure the numerous debates surrounding legal personhood.
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Drawing on extensive research, scholarship, legislation, and court cases from around the globe, this book offers readers — with or without previous knowledge — new insights into legal personhood. It scrutinizes how personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights. It then posits that a better understanding of legal personhood is as a cluster property. Finally, it applies this new theory to explain and structure the numerous debates surrounding legal personhood.
Drawing on extensive research, scholarship, legislation, and court cases from around the globe, this book offers readers — with or without previous knowledge — new insights into legal personhood. It scrutinizes how personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights. It then posits that a better understanding of legal personhood is as a cluster property. Finally, it applies this new theory to explain and structure the numerous debates surrounding legal personhood.