Nature of Personality in Jurisprudence

The main concerns of law are obligations and rights. Capacity and personality are prerequisites for exercising rights and carrying out obligations. Rights and obligations are properties of persons, who are substances. The word "person" comes from the Latin word "persona," which refers to those acknowledged by the law as competent to have rights and obligations. It was used for a mask, the persona concealed behind the mask, a stage character, and a representation in general in Greek. An individual was referred to as a church spokesperson. Under Roman law, the phrase might refer to any individual or an individual concerning the legal relationships connected to him. A slave was not a person, and those without justifications were viewed as less than human.

Definition of ‘Legal Person’

Different jurists have provided different definitions for this word. Since people are seen to be the only subjects with rights and obligations, the term "personality" is frequently used only to refer to people.

The Indian Penal Code's Section 11 defines a "person" as any organisation, body of people, or firm, whether or not it is incorporated.

1) Salmond: "Any entity that the law recognises as having rights and being obligated to fulfil legal obligations is a person.

2) According to Savigny, a person is the object or holder of a right.

3) A person is an entity to whom obligations and rights may be attached, according to Grey.

4) Austin defines a "person" as any physical or natural person, as well as any entity that may be considered human.

Kind of Persons

"A person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and bound by legal duties," states Salmond. There are two further classifications for the term "person": natural person and legal/artificial person.

Natural person

• As to Austin's definition, a "person" is any physical or natural entity, encompassing all entities that are considered human.

• In legalese, a "person" is a person who possesses an independent legal personality.

• A live human is usually regarded as a natural person. In the past, slaves were only recognised as natural persons by their birth and were not granted any rights that a legal person would have.

• Natural persons are granted the majority of the rights and advantages, along with responsibilities and obligations, that are provided by the law.

• According to the law, a natural person may sue and be sued. The foundational rights and human rights are established for the benefit of these natural individuals.

• A natural person possesses civil rights, including the freedom to travel, the right to practise one's religion, the right to life, the right to vote, the right to privacy, the right to marry, and the right to practise one's profession.

• Since these rights are significant and helpful to people, only natural individuals are granted them. A natural person's age is a determining factor for a few rights, though, such as the ability to vote and marry.

A Legal or Artificial Person according to the Law

• According to legal doctrine, a person or business is only considered to be a legal person when they can file and receive lawsuits in a court of law.

• A legal person might be an idol, a trade union, a corporation, or a state, for instance.

• An entity can be made into an artificial person with legal status and worth by the application of the law. The purpose of the law is to make the identity of the person suing or being sued clear. The legislation serves as a vehicle for granting someone the ability to become a legal person and easily navigate judicial proceedings.

• Therefore, for the law, legal people are endowed by the law with rights and obligations.

• The key idea to grasp in this situation is that while all legal entities are not natural persons, all natural persons are thought of as legal persons.

• Legal personhood goes beyond companies to include positions held by individuals. A president or a deputy officer are official titles bestowed upon individuals.

• Moreover, the legislation also establishes the notion of corporate personhood. In comparison to other legal persons, a corporate personality has additional rights and obligations.

The Legal Standing of an Unborn Child

• As previously stated, a person is regarded as a natural person from the moment of their birth until their death.

• Such a natural person has a legal personality as he can have rights and obligations.

• A natural person often lacks legal personhood both before and after birth. Therefore, a natural person has to be alive to have rights and obligations. But there's a problem with the law when it comes to an unborn kid. The existence of an unborn child is established by fields like medicine and religion.

• A kid is deemed to be born in its mother's womb according to legal fiction. He will become legally recognised upon birth.

• Generally speaking, the law only applies to natural individuals who are still alive, but it provides an exemption for infants ventre sa mere or children who are still in their mothers' wombs.

• In the womb, a kid has the potential to acquire some rights and inherit property; however, this is contingent upon the infant's survival.

• During partition, an unborn child is regarded as a person. Such an unborn kid may also be able to recover damages for harm it suffered while still within its mother's womb.

Indian Legislation about Unborn Children

1. Indian Penal Code, 1860 Section 315: According to this provision of the IPC, it is an offence to cause prenatal harm to a child that is capable of being born and that harm prevents the child from being born.

2. Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 Section 416 - According to this section of the CrPC, if a woman who has been condemned to death turns out to be pregnant, the High Court must issue an order postponing the execution, or it may reduce the penalty to life in prison if it sees proper.

3. The 1882 Transfer of Property Act, section 13: According to this clause of the aforementioned Act, property may be transferred through a trust for the benefit of an unborn child.

4. Section 114 of the Indian Succession Act, of 1925 stipulates that previous interest must be created before the unborn child is entitled to ownership of the incorporeal or corporeal property. However, according to the Act, the unborn kid won't be considered to have any property until he is born alive.

5. For certain purposes, an unborn child is considered a living person in Hindu law. Section 20 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 addresses the rights of an embryonic child that is still inside its mother's womb.

6. An unborn kid in a Hindu Undivided Family will have an interest in coparcenary property, according to Mitakshara Law. A donation made in the name of a nonexistent person is invalid under Mohammedan law.

Indian Legislation about Dead Person

Dead people cannot sue or be sued because they lack legal personality. Legally speaking, dead males are no longer considered human. A person's legal individuality expires along with them. Until their successors inherit their property, they are no longer the proprietors of it. A person's estate is divided by their will after they pass away. Law acknowledges and considers a person's wishes and interests from their time spent living, even after they have passed away.

Men's worries continue even after they pass away about these three issues. Those are his assets, his physique, and his reputation:

1. His Body: A living being is concerned with the care that is provided for his own body. A respectable funeral and a suitable burial are desirable to someone. Criminal law ensures that every deceased person has a respectable funeral, and it is illegal to violate a cemetery.

2. His reputation: Everyone wants to live up to their reputation, even after they pass away. The criminal code offers some protection to a deceased person's reputation. A defamation lawsuit may be brought for a deceased person's reputational harm.

3. His Property/Estate: Even after death, a man's hand may still control and decide how he wants to use the assets he possesses while he is still living. By WILL, he can dispose of his possessions. Property is divided by the WILL when a person passes away intestate, or with a living will.

Legal Status of an Animal

• The question of whether an animal qualifies as a human comes next. Based on Salmond's aforementioned premise, it is reasonable to argue that animals cannot be considered persons since they are unable to have rights or obligations.

• However, some legal scholars contend that since animal abuse is illegal and trusts established under English law are recognised as being beneficial to specific animals, therefore animals are human beings.

• However, this reasoning is misleading. The legal system views the obligations to protect animals from harm and to uphold public and charitable trusts for their benefit as obligations to society at large.

• For the first time, the Court of India acknowledges the transgender population as the "third gender" to safeguard important constitutional rights.

Here are some situations in which animals are entitled to certain legal protections:

1. Animal cruelty is a serious crime. Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 in India lays out the penalties for beating, kicking, torturing, mutilating, and other forms of animal cruelty.

2. As a public and benevolent trust, one that benefits a specific class of animals rather than individual animals is legitimate and enforceable.

Legal status of ‘Mosques’

Court opinions on this topic diverge. The Lahore High Court ruled in Maula Bux v. Hafizudeen that a mosque qualified as a juristic person and may be sued. In contrast, the privy council stated that mosques are not artificial people in the sense of the law and therefore no lawsuit may be filed by or against them in the Masjid Shahi Ganj issue.

The legal status of ‘Idols’

The Privy Council ruled in the historic Pramatha Nath Mullick v. Pradyumna Kumar Mullick case that an idol is a legal person and that its locational wishes must be fully honoured. In Yogendra Nath Naskar v. Commissioner of Income Tax, the Supreme Court of India affirmed a similar view, ruling that an idol is a juristic person who can hold property and be subject to taxation through its Shebaits, who are entrusted with the management and possession of its property.

About Corporate Personality

The legal systems of India and England acknowledge a corporation's legal identity. A corporation is a synthetic individual. The juristic personality that is ascribed to a company implies three criteria. These are

• There has to be a gathering of people with a certain goal in mind.

• Organs are necessary for a firm to operate.

• Legal fiction attributes volition (animus) to the company.

Theories on Corporate Personality

Concession Theory

This argument holds that the state has provided juristic individuality as a concession. Whether or not to grant a business legal personality is completely up to the state. The concession theory is distinct from fiction theory in that it places more emphasis on the State's authority to recognise a business.

This excessive focus has been condemned by numerous jurists as it might open doors to State tyranny.

Fiction Theory

As to the proponents of this idea, which include Viggny, Kelson, Salmond, and Holland, a corporation is nothing more than fiction, a collection of people who are legally recognised as a single entity.

Professor Grey claims that the company is an abstract creature that is established by fiction and that the wills of individuals are assigned to it by a second fabrication.

Legally speaking, a business is distinct from its members or shareholders. The business could fail, but its owners might still be wealthy.

Group personality theory

According to this view, every collective organisation possesses a genuine will, a real intellect, and a real capacity for action. Otto Van Gierke advanced this hypothesis, which Johannes Althusius mostly contested. According to Gierke, there is no fiction involved in the establishment of corporations. It is not a physical reality, but rather a psychological one. He went on to say that the law only has the authority to recognise an entity or not identify one; it cannot create new entities.

Purpose theory

For the sake of this particular situation, companies are recognised as individuals. Foundations are regarded as legal persons in Germany. A foundation is a kind of trust established for philanthropic reasons. To make legal transactions easier, these foundations are regarded as juristic personalities.

Bracket theory

The main proponent of this theory is the German jurist Ihering, who held that a juristic personality serves only as a symbol to enable the corporation to function; only the members of the corporation are "persons" in the true sense of the word, and a bracket is placed around each member to denote that they are to be treated as a single entity once they have formed themselves into a corporation. The primary objection to this idea is that it makes no mention of instances in which individual members should be held accountable for their actions and the breaking of the corporate veil.

Kelson’s theory of legal personality

According to Kelson's approach, personality is only a technical personification of a set of rules, a focal point of imputation that unifies particular sets of obligations and rights. Kelson demonstrates that a corporation's and an individual's legal personalities are identical.

Legal Personality of the State

The state is the most powerful form of social organisation. The state is a legal entity capable of both suing and being sued. According to Article 300 of the Indian Constitution, "The Government of India may sue or be sued by the name of the Union of India, and the Government of a State may sue or be sued by the name of the State."

Modern writers assign sovereignty to the state. The state is sovereign; laws are state laws; revenues are state revenues; and public obligations are state liabilities.

England does not recognise the state as a legal entity. Salmond contends that the institution of monarchy renders the attribution of legal identity to the state redundant. The state's rights and obligations are always considered as those of the King, who serves as its head. As a result, a state lacks its legal personality.

Conclusion

The idea of legal personhood is crucial in a legal system because it underpins the goal of law in a society. Laws are enacted to control human behaviour so that members of society's actions do not harm one another or infringe on the rights of others. It introduces the notion of accountability, which is required to achieve social peace. This principle applies to more than just live humans. It includes unborn children, deceased people, animals, companies, idols, mosques, the environment, and even the state, as they are all part of society and have an impact on people's daily lives at different levels.