Explain the significance of legal personality Essay

Explain the significance of legal personality - Essay Example Additionally, mentally ill person and minors as well, cannot be allowed to enter into a contractual relationship. The same is applicable to children, who have less reasoning level in comparison with the adults. In the subsequent part of this paper, an explanation of certain aspects of natural and artificial legal personality and limitations on legal personality is included. The nature and extent of natural legal personality Legal personality has multiple dimensions. These dimensions are mostly determined by different social roles, such as employer-employee, voter-householder, and father-husband. However, each role has different legal rules attached with it. And, the legal rules are mostly determined by the law on the basis of sex, age, nationality, income, occupation or any other group characteristic that the law-makers consider as relevant. By this classification, the law allocates certain rights and obligations to each category. When life begins Basically, to determine the beginnin g of life is a complex process. An unborn foetus is not capable of being a legal person. In law, once born alive, a newly born child will own the label of natural legal personality with certain legal rights. When life ends Still, there is no legal term defining death in law. Historically, stopping of the heart beating has been recognised as a point of death. However, due to the recent advancement in the medicine, with the help of machines, heartbeat can be made functional like other parts of human body. However, in R v Malcherek and Steel [1981] 1 WLR 690; did provide a definition for death. Facts A man stabbed a woman. Her brain became dead but she was kept alive with a life-support machine. However, she died and the man blamed doctors turning off the machine rather than his actions killed her. Held In the Court of Appeal, Lord Chief Justice Lane remarked that the definition of death was the irreversible death of the brain stem, which directs the basic body functions such as breath ing. The occurrence of such situation validates the death of a body even if other body parts are made functional with the use of mechanical methods. Legal personality-after death Humans do not have unlimited form of legal personality. This limited legal personality is also applicable to after death. However, a person who wrote the will (the testator) is allowed to ensure that even after his or her death a legal will after death will be enforced according to the wishes of the testator. Such situations occur when the distribution of a property is going to take place. In case of a dispute, the court is authorised to ascertain the wishes of the testator. Additionally, prior death consent must be ensured from the deceased if the body parts are going to be removed from the dead body. Organisations The status of legal personality can be conferred to a company in United Kingdom (Teubner, 1988). Under this condition, the company is defined as having separate and distinct existence in compari son with its shareholders. As a result, the shareholders own their shares not the company (Davies, 2002). Although, the shareholders are owners of the company and they provide capital for it, yet they cannot be sued in case, the company becomes unable to pay for its own liabilities Case law: Salomon v Salomon & Co Ltd (1897) Facts: Salomon converted his business into a limited company. Mr Salomon was the managing director and majority