Legal personhood

“ Indeed the Court has held that Congress may for reasons adequate to itself confer bounties upon persons and, by consenting to suit, convert their moral claim into a legal one enforceable by litigation in an undoubted constitutional court. ”

“ But, while it is the duty of the courts to put a construction upon statutes which shall, so far as possible, be consonant with good morals, we know of no legal principle which would authorize us to pronounce a statute of this kind, which is plain and unambiguous upon its face, void, by reason of its failure to conform to our own standard of social and moral obligations. ”

“ But while the realization in practice of public law and of criminal law is assured, because it is imposed as a duty on public officials, the realization in practice of private law is presented to individuals under the form of their legal rights; that is, it is left exclusively to them to take the initiative in its realization, left exclusively to their action. ”

“ In dealing, then, with such phrases as 'jura personarum' and 'personal rights,' we must keep in view the difference between the legal and ethical sense of the proposition that all rights are personal, or subsist as between persons. ”

“ No man can in his own right be under any obligation to himself, or own any encumbrance over his own property. Nulli res sua servit. [277]
§ 113. Legal Persons. A legal person is any subject-matter to which the law attributes a merely legal or fictitious personality. This extension, for good and sufficient reasons, of the conception of personality beyond the limits of fact—this recognition of persons who are not men—is one of the most noteworthy feats of the legal imagination, and the true nature and uses of it will form the subject of our consideration during the remainder of this chapter. ”

“ The act itself, with all the circumstances of the inhabitants before and at the time of its passage, have formed the subject of legal judgments and professional opinions upon which mighty interests have grown up and now repose. ”

“ In Justice the young advocate who appears for the defence is not so much pleading for the client under the law, as arraigning the present legal system, setting up a new conception of law based upon common sense, human insight, and a morality finer than legalism. ”

“ A dispute having arisen as to the legality of an unusual and occasional practice, the legislator thinks fit to declare it legal, trusting all the while, consciously or unconsciously, to habit, sentiment, or prejudice, to prevent its extending itself in a way which, to him, as doubtless to the great bulk of the community, would appear not merely mischievous, but revolting. ”

“ The intense intellectual and emotional life, and the heightening of sensations which came with the advance of civilization, made it clear to men that only a part of the pain, pleasure, and profit of life lay in physical things. Thoughts, emotions, and sensations demanded legal recognition, and the beautiful capacity for growth which characterizes the common law enabled the judges to afford the requisite protection, without the interposition of the legislature. ”

“ The moral idea of personality is constantly tending to affect the legal conception of the relation between rights and persons. Thus the 'jura personarum,' which properly = either rights arising out of 'status,' or rights which not only (like all rights) reside in someone having a legal status and are available against others having a legal status, but are exercised over, or in respect of, someone possessed of such status (e.g. a wife or a servant) , come to be understood as rights derived from the human personality or belonging to man as man. ”

“ The closest synonym of legal "privilege" seems to be legal "liberty." This is sufficiently indicated by an unusually discriminating and instructive passage in Mr. Justice Cave's opinion in Allen v. Flood: [58]
The personal rights with which we are most familiar are: 1. Rights of reputation; 2. Rights of bodily safety and freedom; 3. Rights of property; or, in other words, rights relating to mind, body and estate, * * * In my subsequent remarks the word "right" will, as far as possible, always be used in the above sense ”

“ When, therefore, in an ordinary trial in an action at law we speak of the common law we refer to the law of the state as it has been adopted by statute or recognized by the courts as the foundation of legal rights. It is in regard to decisions made by the state courts in reference to this law, and defining what is the law of the state as modified by the opinions of its own courts, by the statutes of the state, and the customs and habits of the people, that the trouble arises. ”

“ In saying that a judge is just, we imply that he is so far efficiently discharging his part in society—the due application of the law—without reference to irrelevant considerations. He is a machine which rightly parts the sheep and goats—taking the legal definition of goats and sheep—instead of putting some goats into the sheepfold, and vice versâ. That is, he secures the accurate application of the purely legal rule. Organic justice involves an application of the same principle because it equally depends upon the exclusion of irrelevant considerations. ”

“ All legally recognized interests of substance in developed legal systems are normally individual interests. To the historical jurist of the nineteenth century, this fact, coupled with the development of ownership out of possession, served to show us the idea which was realizing in human experience of the administration of justice and to confirm the position reached by the metaphysical jurists. ”

“ On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other.
But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other. ”

“ Rights to do certain acts, such, for instance, as the visitation and superintendence of a college and the appointment of its officers, may surely be vested rights, to all legal intents, as completely as the right to possess property. ”

“ Effectually to guard the constitutional [Pg 132] and legal rights of all alike, the judges should possess what is called the legal mind and the judicial temperament. They should be able and learned that they may appreciate the real meaning, purpose, and scope of the constitution and statutes; calm and equable in temperament that they may not be influenced by sympathy, prejudice, or other emotions; strong and courageous in character that they may resist all pressure other than fair argument. ”

“ Law and legal rights are functions of the courts, while the police are simply unattached huskies hired to bring into court those who do not come there of their own initiative. We must look elsewhere for the source of the might which legal rights are said and felt to possess, namely, in the origin and function of law itself. ”

“ As those rights which it is the duty of courts of justice to protect and enforce include equitable as well as legal rights, and as each of these classes of rights requires separate treatment, it will be convenient to begin with legal rights. ”

“ So, also, in the case of common interests and actions, we personify as a single person the group of individuals concerned, even though the law recognises no body corporate. We speak of a firm as a person distinct from the individual partners. We speak of a jury, a bench of judges, a public meeting, the community itself, as being itself a person instead of merely a group or society of persons. But legal personality is not reached until the law recognises, over and above the associated individuals, a fictitious being which in a manner represents them, but is not identical with them. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States, in creating and defining the judicial power of the General Government, establishes this distinction between law and equity, and a party who claims a legal title must proceed at law, and may undoubtedly proceed according to the forms of practice in such cases in the State court. ”

“ In his chapter on "Legal Rights and Duties" the distinguished author takes the position that a right always has a duty as its correlative; [37] and he seems to define the former relation substantially according to the more limited meaning of "claim." Legal privileges, powers, and immunities are prima facie ignored, and the impression conveyed that all legal relations can be comprehended under the conceptions, "right" and "duty." But, with the greatest hesitation and deference, the suggestion may be ventured that a number of his examples seem to show the inadequacy of such mode of treatment. ”

“ And it was ever esteemed in all countries a privilege of the highest and most beneficial nature. The more it is searched into and understood, the more it is sure to be valued: And this is a species of knowledge most absolutely necessary for every gentleman in the kingdom; as well because he may be frequently called upon to determine in this capacity the rights of others, his fellow-subjects, as because his own property, his liberty, and his life, depend upon maintaining, in its legal force, the constitutional trial by jury. ”

“ Such agent shall proceed to collect the proper proof to establish the right of such person to his freedom, and shall perform such journeys, take such measures, institute and procure to be prosecuted such legal proceedings, under the direction of the Governor, as shall be necessary to procure such person to be restored to his liberty and returned to this State. ”

“ Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions. ”

“ The right to practise law in the courts as a profession, is a privilege granted by the law, under such limitations or conditions in each state or government as the law-making power may prescribe. It is a privilege, and not an absolute right. The distinction may be illustrated by the difference between the right of a party to a suit in court to defend his own cause, and the right of another to appear and defend for him. The one, like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is inalienable. ”

“ Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. ”

“ The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be. Conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society.' The Court today allows belief, not conduct, to be regulated. ”

“ Civil Lawyers, indeed, will tell you, with a grave face, that a slave is nobody; as Common Lawyers will, that a bastard is the son of nobody. But, to an unprejudiced eye, the condition of a state is the condition of all the individuals, without distinction, that compose it. ”

“ Such a person has exhibited a trait of character which, without the aid of the law in question, authorizes the court to declare him unfit to practise before it, and to strike his name from the roll of its attorneys if it be found there. ”

“ Those persons who regard the provisions of the Constitution, and particularly the ones designed to protect the rights of the individual, not as a mere collection of arbitrary rules, but as a set of principles adapted to promote the happiness and prosperity of the people, will find it easy to believe that these principles, clearly expounded and wisely applied, cannot fail to retain their hold upon the respect of the citizen. ”

“ The subject of the civil law, the ego, the object of the civil law, the objective or natural world, the relation between the two, or property—such is, in a word, the method; the equality of all men before the law is its principle; the respect for property and the directness of litigation are its aims. ”

“ Our lawyers to-day are so far from believing that the balance of Justice should, in private law as well as in criminal law, weigh the injustice which has been done, and not only the pecuniary interest, that, in daring to speak about it, I must expect to hear it objected that in this precisely lies the difference between criminal law and the law pertaining to the rights of persons. ”

“ And this title being, in nature, neither hereditary, nor trausiuissible to children, or descendants, or relations by blood, the idea of a man born a magistrate, lawgiver or judge, is absurd and unnatural. "That the people have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves." ”

“ It is as to his past life, as to his past conduct, and as to his then sufficiency because of his past life and past conduct. His 'private and professional character shall appear to be fair,' said the rule. Moreover, we submit that every man stands here with a continuing condition of that sort upon him. The condition attaches every hour in which any man stands before the courts. It is not simply that he is, at the time he takes it, a man whose private and professional character appears fair. ”

“ The whole future will of each individual is concentrated into the one moment when he declares his willingness to participate in the commonwealth; and this extending the present will so as to embrace the whole future, changes the expressed common will into LAW. In so far as the common will determines how far the rights of each person shall extend, the law is called Civil Law; and in so far as it determines the punishment which shall follow a violation of the law, it is called Penal or Criminal Law. ”