7 Juridical Persons (Legal/Artificial Persons)

A juridical person is a non-human entity clothed with legal personality — capable of rights and duties, of suing and being sued in its own name, with perpetual (or at least term) existence distinct from its members. Contrasted with natural persons.Consequences of juridical personality (the bundle):1. Distinct existence: the corporation's property is not its members' property; its debts are not its members' debts;2. Perpetual succession: changes in membership (death, transfer of shares) do not affect its existence — "members may come and members may go, but the corporation goes on forever"3. Common seal / registered name as its signature;4. Limited liability (where statute provides, as in companies);5. Capacity to contract, own, sue and be sued in its own name.Theories of juridical personality — the classic four:TheoryChampionsCore claimCritiqueFictiontheorySavigny, Salmond, WindscheidThe corporation is a fiction/ abstraction; only natural persons are real; personality is artificially conceded by law for convenienceExplains why personality is statutory; cannot explain why the State itself (a corporation) can confer what it does not possess; ignores the sociological reality of group lifeConcessiontheory(Variant of fiction; favoured in continental public law)Personality is a concession/grant by the State; no group is a person unless and until the sovereign admits itMakes personality arbitrary and politically contingent; historically corporatism was used both to enable and to suppress associationsRealist(organic)theoryGierke, Beseler, Otto von Gierke's German schoolThe…