legal personhood
Rights-bearing legal status
Legal personhood is the status of being recognized by law as an entity with rights, duties, and the capacity to sue or be sued.
Humans have it automatically; corporations, governments, and other organizations acquire it through legal mechanisms.
The concept occasionally extends to rivers, ecosystems, or AI systems when lawmakers grant them protected status: The court considered whether the chimpanzee could be granted legal personhood.
- LLCHybrid business entity abbreviation
- animal rightsMoral claims for fauna
- individualOne separate human being
- citizenLegal national member
- corporationLegally separate business entity
AI ethics · liability · moral agency · property ownership · human · birth certificate · accountability · plaintiff · defendant · rights and duties · guardian · nonprofit · government agency · minor · adult · constitutional law · international law · statutory law
- jurisprudencenatural law, Hart, Austin, Thomas Aquinas, rule of law
- human rightshuman dignity, civil liberties, right to liberty, right to life, fundamental rights
- women's rightssuffrage movement, women's suffrage, women's rights, gender equality, feminism
- animal ethicsanimal ethics, animal welfare, animal rights, animal protection, animal liberation
- business entitiescorporation, LLC, sole proprietorship, partnership, company
- legal historymedieval law, Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, common law, civil law
legal personhoodcivil death
Forfeiture of rights while living
statelessness · outlawry · rightlessness · non-recognition · attainder
legal personhoodthing
Unspecified entity or matter
object · slavery · enslavement · chattel · commodification
legal, legality, legally, legalize, legalization, illegal, illegally, illegality, legalese