PERSONS

Dr. Manoranjan Kumar

Assistant Professor
Department of Law
Chanakya National Law University, Patna
Nyaya Nagar, Mithapur, Patna
Mob.: +91 9709475958
Email: manoranjan.cnlu@gmail.com
 Revision
• Derived from the word ‘persona’ which means mask
• From mask, the word person came to denote the
human beings who were wearing those masks to
play certain characters
• In common parlance, human being is the prime case
of a person
• Personality therefore signifies those characteristics
which are the attributes of a human being viz. power
of thought, speech and choice
 Do we personify?
• To personify an object means to attribute
that object with the characteristics that are
unique to a human being viz. power of
thought, speech and choice

• Outside the domain of law also, mankind has

personified gods, angels, even devils and so
forth.
 Concept of Persons
• We have seen in the earlier chapter that the
Law is concerned with rights and duties
• Rights and duties, both involve the notion of
choice
• In any legal system, rights and duties can inhere
primarily in those beings which have the ability
of choice,
• Primarily rights and duties inhere in human
beings
 Concept of Persons
• In the domain of law, personality would seem
to entail the possession of the characteristics
particular to human beings viz. rights and
duties

• In other words, in the domain of law,

personality signifies the capability to have
rights and duties
 Definition of Person
– A person is any being whom the law regards as
capable of rights and duties
– Any being that is capable of rights and duties is a
person, whether a human being or not
And
no being that is not so capable is a person even
though he be a human
• For example, slaves were destitute of legal
personality in those systems which allowed slavery
 Kinds of Person
• Persons are of two kinds, known as natural
person and legal person
• A natural person is a human being

• A legal person is any being, real or imaginary,

who for the purpose of legal reasoning is
treated in greater or less degree in the same
way as human beings.
 Legal Status of Lower Animals
• The only natural persons are human beings
• As of now, the lower animals are not persons,
either natural or legal
• They are not regarded as capable of rights and
duties
• They have interests, but those interests are not
recognized by law and likewise they are capable
of acts, but those acts are not recognized as
lawful or unlawful
 Legal Status of Lower Animals
• The lower animals are the objects of rights
and duties
• They are not, however, the subjects of rights
and duties
• The beasts are as incapable of legal rights as of
legal duties
• Beasts’ interests are not recognized by any
legal system although it may be protected
 Legal Status of Lower Animals
• Cruelty to animals is an offence in many legal
system
• Killing of certain endangered species is
prohibited by legislative enactments
• Can one argue that these enactments have
conferred rights on the beasts and imposed
corresponding duties on humans?
 Legal Status of Lower Animals
• The duties imposed by such laws are
conceived as duties towards society itself

• These duties do not correspond to any right

inhering in those animals, rather they may
more accurately be spoken of as
corresponding to the public rights vested in
the community at large
 Legal Status of Lower Animals
• One should not, however, think that the beasts
cannot be recognized as persons

• It is of course always possible for a legal system to

regard an animal as a person and endow it with
rights and duties
• But as of now however the guiding principle is
hominum causa omne jus constitutum that is law
is established or the benefit of human beings
 Legal Status of Dead Men
• Outside the domain of law the personality of
a human being is said to commence at his
birth and ceases to exist with his death
• Law takes the same view
• Dead men/women are no longer persons
• They are said to surrender their personality
with their lives
 Legal Status of Dead Men
• All the rights of a person and his interests
perish with him yet, law in some degree and
to some extent recognizes and takes care of
some of the interests and desires of a human
being when alive
• There are three things primarily which are
taken care of by law even after the death of
the human being
 Legal Status of Dead Men
• These three things are: body, reputation and
estate
• The corpse is the property of no one. The law
secures decent burial or the last rites for all
dead men and women
• The reputation of the dead also receives some
degree of protection against defamation
 Legal Status of Dead Men
• The third thing in respect of which a deceased
person is accorded some protection is his
desire or wish about testamentary succession
of his property or estate
• Long after his death a person may continue to
determine the enjoyment and disposition of
the property which he owned when he was
alive
 Legal Status of Dead Men
• Dead human beings are, however, neither
natural persons nor legal persons, by virtue of
the limited protections discussed above
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• While the lower animals and dead human
beings possess no personality, the position of
the unborn child is little different

• A child in mother’s womb is regarded by a

legal fiction as a person already born, for
many purposes
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• For instance, a child in mother’s womb can
own property although his ownership is
necessarily contingent
• A man can settle property upon his wife and
the children to be born of her
• A man may die intestate and his unborn child
will inherit his estate
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• Thus, for many purposes a child in mother’s
womb is treated by way of a legal fiction, as a
person already born in accordance with the
maxim nasciturus pro jam nato habetur which
means that the unborn is deemed to have
been born to the extent that his own benefits
are concerned
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• A child en ventre sa mère is a person in being for the
purpose of acquisition of property by the child itself or
being a life chosen to form part of period in the rule
against perpetuities

• Explanation 3 of section 299 reads The causing of the

death of child in the mother’s womb is not homicide. But
it may amount to culpable homicide to cause the death of
a living child, if any part of that child has been brought
forth, though the child may not have breathed or been
completely born.
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• Section 416 of the Cr.P.C. provides: If a woman
sentenced to death is found to be pregnant,
the High Court shall order the execution of the
sentence to be postponed, and may, if it thinks
fit, commute the sentence to imprisonment
for life.
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• In Walker v. Great Northern Ry. Of Ireland,
(1890) 28 L.R.Ir. 69, where the claim was made
by the female infant against a railway
company for injuries inflicted upon her while
in mother’s womb due to the defendant’s
negligence, the Irish court held that no cause
of action was disclosed
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• In Montreal Tramways v. Leveille, [1933] 4 D.L.R. 337, it
was held that although the child was not actually born at
the time the appellant by its fault created the conditions
which brought about the deformity to its feet, yet, under
the civil law, it is deemed to be so if for its advantage.
Therefore when it was subsequently born alive and viable
it was clothed with all the rights of action which it would
have had if actually in existence at the date of the
accident. The wrongful act of the appellant produced its
damage on the birth of the child and the right of action
was then complete.
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• In Pinchin, N.O. v. Santam Insurance Co. Ltd.
1963, (2) S.A. 254 (W.L.D.), question arose
whether the nasciturus principle legitimately
could be extended to allow a child, after birth,
to sue for injuries suffered by the child while
still in the womb, as a consequence of injuries
inflicted upon the mother. Although the court
was prepared to hold that the action was
available in principle.
 Legal Status of Unborn Child
• The rights of an unborn person, whether
proprietary or personal, are all contingent on
his being born alive
• The contingent personality of a child en ventre
sa mère ceases to exist ab initio if the child
never sees and takes his place among the
living beings
 Legal Persons
• A legal person is any being, real or imaginary,
who for the purpose of legal reasoning is
treated in greater or less degree in the same
way as human beings

• A legal person is any subject-matter other than

a human being to which the law attributes
personality.
 Legal Persons
• The extension of the conception of personality
beyond the class of human beings is regarded
as one of the most remarkable feats of the
legal imagination
• Law may attribute the quality of personality as
much to a purely imaginary thing as to a real
thing
 Elements of Legal Persons
• The thing that is personified may be termed as
the corpus of the legal person so created to
which the law infuses the animus of a
fictitious personality
• All legal personality involves personification,
however, the converse is not necessarily true
• In other words, every personification is not
necessarily a legal person
 Kinds of Legal Persons
• Legal persons, being the arbitrary creations of
law may be of as many kinds as the law
pleases
• The English law originally recognised only few
types of legal persons namely, the
Corporations, Registered Trade Unions and
Friendly Societies
 Kinds of Legal Persons
• Corporation is a group or series of persons
which by a legal fiction is regarded and treated
as itself a person

• A trade union is an association of workmen or

employers for the purpose among other
things, of collective bargaining
 Kinds of Legal Persons
• A friendly society is a voluntary association
formed for the purpose of raising, by the
subscription of the members, funds out of
which advances may be made for the mutual
relief and the maintenance of the members
and their families in sickness, infancy, old age,
or infirmity.
 Kinds of Legal Persons
• Other common law systems have gone much
beyond the English law in so far as they have
recognised several distinct varieties of legal
persons
• Salmond, broadly classifies them into three
categories on the basis of the corpus that the
selects for personification
 Kinds of Legal Persons
1. First class of legal persons is corporation
wherein a group or series of individuals is
regarded and treated itself as a person
2. Second class is wherein the corpus that is
selected for personification by law is an
institution, e.g., university, church, hospital,
library etc.
 Kinds of Legal Persons
• In the third category of legal persons, the
corpus is some fund or estate devoted to
special uses e.g., charitable fund etc.
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