legal person

A legal person is a human or a non-human legal entity that is treated as a person for legal purposes. A legal person is capable of engaging in all usual legal business that a real person can participate in, such as suing , being sued, owning property , and entering into contracts .

The concept of legal personhood is especially popular in business law, where business organizations like corporations , partnerships , and limited liability companies possess legal personhood. As a result, these statutorily created entities are able to be treated as legally distinct from their shareholders and officers .

The legal personhood of legal entities is also understood to afford some constitutional rights to these entities, including the due process and equal protection aspects of the Fourteenth Amendment . This aspect of legal personhood featured prominently in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) decision upholding political campaign contributions as an exercise of a corporation’s free speech rights.

A legal person may also be referred to as a fictitious person or an artificial person .

[Last reviewed in June of 2023 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

Keywords

• corporations
• business law

Wex

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