Enter your email Address

  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Current Affairs
    • Daily News Analysis
    • IAS Next Current Affairs Notes
    • Yojna/Kurukshetra Summary
  • Law Updates
    • Bare Acts
    • Landmark Judgements
    • Contemporary Legal Topics
  • Study Material
    • For Civil Services
      • Economy
      • Environment & Ecology
      • Geography
      • History
      • Notes
      • Polity
      • Science
      • UP Special
    • For Judicial Services
      • Civil Procedure Code
      • Constitutional Law
      • Criminal Procedure Code
      • India Penal Code
      • Indian Contract Act
      • International Law
      • Jurisprudence
      • Law of Evidence
      • Law of Tort
      • Specific Relief Act
  • Syllabus
    • State Services
    • UPSC-IAS
    • Judicial Services
    • Delhi Judicial Service Syllabus
    • Gujarat Judicial Service Syllabus
    • Himachal Pradesh Judicial Services Syllabus
    • Haryana Judicial Service Syllabus
    • Bihar Judicial Services Syllabus
    • Rajasthan Judicial Service Syllabus
No Result
View All Result
IAS NEXT
No Result
View All Result
Home Study Material For Judicial Services Jurisprudence

Theories of Juristic Personality

iasnext by iasnext
5 months ago
in Jurisprudence
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Theories of Juristic Personality

Ethical Natural law philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries as well as the metaphysical theorists of 19th century postulated the concept of will as an essential requirement for exercising legal right. They also believed that personality is the subjective possibility of a rightful will.

Legal personality is an artificial creation of law. Entities recognized by law are capable of being parties to a legal relationship.

A natural person is a human being whereas legal persons are artificial persons, such as a corporation, created by law and given certain legal rights and duties of a human being; a being, real or imaginary, who for the purpose of legal reasoning is treated more or less as a human being. All legal persons can sue or be sued.

Theories of Juristic Personality

1. Fiction Theory – This theory was put forward by Von Savigny, Salmond, Coke, Blackstone, and Holland etc. According to this theory, the personality of a corporation is different from that of its members.

Savigny regarded corporation as an exclusive creation of law having no existence apart from its individual members who form the corporate group and whose acts are attributed to the corporate entity. As a result of this, any change in the membership does not affect the existence of the corporation.

It is essential to recognize clearly the element of legal fiction involved in this process. A company is in law something different from its shareholders or members. The property of the company is not in law the property of the shareholders.

The company may become insolvent, while its members remain rich.

Gray supported this theory by saying that it is only human beings that are capable of thinking, therefore it is by way of fiction that we attribute ‘will’ to non-human beings through human beings who are capable of thinking and assign them legal personality.

Wolf said that there are three advantages of this theory. It is analytical, more elastic and it makes easier to disregard juristic personality where it is desirable.

2. Concession Theory – This theory is concerned with the Sovereignty of a State. It pre-supposes that corporation as a legal person has great importance because it is recognized by the State or the law. According to this theory, a juristic person is merely a concession or creation of the state.

Concession Theory is often regarded an offspring of the Fiction Theory as both the theories assert that the corporation within the state have no legal personality except as is conceded by the State. Exponents of the fiction theory, for example, Savigny, Dicey and Salmond are found to support this theory.

Nonetheless, it is obvious that while the fiction theory is ultimately a philosophical theory that a corporation is merely a name and a thing of the intellect, the concession theory is indifferent to the question of the reality of a corporation in as much as it focuses only on the source (State) from which the legal power of the corporation is derived.

3. Group Personality Theory or Realist Sociological Theory – This theory was propounded by Johannes Althusius and carried forward by Otto Van Gierke. This group of theorists believed that every collective group has a real mind, a real will and a real power of action.

A corporation therefore, has a real existence, irrespective of the fact whether it is recognized by the State or not.

Gierke believed that the existence of a corporation is real and not based on any fiction.  It is a psychological reality and not a physical reality. He further said that law has no power to create an entity but merely has the right to recognize or not to recognize an entity.

A corporation from the realist perspective is a social organism while a human is regarded as a physical organism. This theory was favoured more by the sociologists rather than by the lawyers.

While discussing the realism of the corporate personality, most of the realist jurists claimed that the fiction theory failed to identify the relationship of law with the society in general.

The main defect of the fiction theory according to the realist jurists was the ignorance of sociological facts that evolved around the law making process.

Horace Gray, however, denied the existence of collective will.  He called it a figment.  He said that to get rid of the fiction of an attributed by saying that corporation has a real general will, is to derive out one fiction by another.

4. The Bracket Theory or the Symbolist Theory – This theory was propounded by Rudolph Ritter von Ihering (also Ihering). According to Ihering, the conception of corporate personality is essential and is merely an economic device by which we can simplify the task of coordinating legal relations.

Hence, when necessary, it is emphasized that the law should look behind the entity to discover the real state of affairs. This is also similar to the concept of lifting of the corporate veil.

This group believed that the juristic personality is only a symbol to facilitate the working of the corporate bodies.  Only the members of the corporation are ‘persons’ in real sense of the term and a bracket is put around them to indicate that they are to be treated as one single unit when they form themselves into a corporation.

5. Purpose Theory or the theory of Zweck Vermogen – The advocates of this theory are Ernst Immanuel Bekker and Alois von Brinz. This theory is also quite similar to the fiction theory. It declared that only human beings can be a person and have rights. This theory also said that a juristic person is no person at all but merely a “subjectless” property destined for a particular purpose. There is ownership but no owner. Thus a juristic person is not constructed round a group of persons but based on an object and purpose.

The assumption that only living persons can be the subject-matter of rights and duties would have deprived imposition of rights and duties on corporations which are non-living entities.  It therefore, became necessary to attribute ‘personality’ to corporations for the purpose of being capable of having rights and duties.

6. Hohfeld’s Theory – He said that juristic persons are creations of arbitrary rules of procedure. According to him, human beings alone are capable of having rights and duties and any group to which the law ascribes juristic personality is merely a procedure for working out the legal rights and jural relations and making them as human beings.

7. Kelsen’s Theory of Legal Personality – He said that there is no difference between legal personality of a company and that of an individual. Personality in the legal sense is only a technical personification of a complex of norms and assigning complexes of rights and duties.

Tags: Concession TheoryFiction TheoryGroup Personality Theory or Realist Sociological TheoryHohfeld’s TheoryJurisprudence NotesKelsen’s Theory of Legal PersonalityLaw Notes for PCS-J AspirantsPurpose Theory or the theory of Zweck VermogenThe Bracket Theory or the Symbolist TheoryTheories of Juristic Personality

Related Posts

Jurisprudence

Ownership: Definition, Concept & Kinds

by iasnext
September 22, 2020
0

Meaning & Definition Ownership refers to the relation that a person has with an object that he owns. It is...

Read more

Possession and Ownership

September 22, 2020

Possession – Kinds of Possession & Theories of Possession

September 22, 2020

Possession – Introduction, Definition & Elements of Possession

September 22, 2020

LAWS OF PROPERTY UNDER JURISPRUDENCE

September 21, 2020

LEGISLATION AND ITS TYPES

September 21, 2020
Next Post

Specific Relief Act-Section 14,15,16

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Post Calendar

September 2020
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930  
    Oct »

Popular Posts

Uncategorized

Best UPSC -IAS Coaching In Lucknow

by iasnext
January 22, 2021
0

Best IAS Coaching for UPSC Civil services Preparation IAS NEXT offers best IAS Coaching for UPSC -IAS/PCS preparation. We have...

Read more

Best UPSC -IAS Coaching In Lucknow

Torts or Wrong to personal Safety Freedom

KIND’S OF TORTIOUS LIABILITY

TYPES OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH

RESERVATIONS

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

Load More

Popular Posts

Mughals Timeline

by iasnext
September 16, 2020
2

All About Preamble of Indian Constitution

by iasnext
November 3, 2020
2

DESTROYING OR WEAKENING THE BINDING FORCE OF PRECEDENTS

by iasnext
September 19, 2020
0

Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube LinkedIn

IAS NEXT is the best civil services coaching in Lucknow at Munsipulia, Indira Nagar Lucknow. Our All the courses are for English Medium Only.

Recent

Best UPSC -IAS Coaching In Lucknow

January 22, 2021

Torts or Wrong to personal Safety Freedom

January 18, 2021

Menu

  • Current Affairs
  • Law Updates
  • Study Material
  • Syllabus

Designed And Develop by Digital Prabhu

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Current Affairs
    • Daily News Analysis
    • IAS Next Current Affairs Notes
    • Yojna/Kurukshetra Summary
  • Law Updates
    • Bare Acts
    • Landmark Judgements
    • Contemporary Legal Topics
  • Study Material
    • For Civil Services
      • Economy
      • Environment & Ecology
      • Geography
      • History
      • Notes
      • Polity
      • Science
      • UP Special
    • For Judicial Services
      • Civil Procedure Code
      • Constitutional Law
      • Criminal Procedure Code
      • India Penal Code
      • Indian Contract Act
      • International Law
      • Jurisprudence
      • Law of Evidence
      • Law of Tort
      • Specific Relief Act
  • Syllabus
    • State Services
    • UPSC-IAS
    • Judicial Services
    • Delhi Judicial Service Syllabus
    • Gujarat Judicial Service Syllabus
    • Himachal Pradesh Judicial Services Syllabus
    • Haryana Judicial Service Syllabus
    • Bihar Judicial Services Syllabus
    • Rajasthan Judicial Service Syllabus

Designed And Develop by Digital Prabhu