The chief characteristics of an artificial, conventional or juristic person are the following:
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ADVERTISEMENTS:
1. A juristic person may be any subject-matter to which the law attributes a fictitious personality. There must exist a group of persons or mass of property as the case may be.
2. A juristic person is a legal creation. The group of persons or the mass in question is given the character of person either by means of (a) a general rule applicable wherever its conditions are satisfied, e.g., under the Companies Act, 1862, or by (b) a special Act of sovereign power, e.g., an incorporating statute or charter.
A mere association of individuals does not form a legal person until the law recognises, over and above the associated individuals, a fictitious being which represent them but it is not identical with them.
Legal personality is a particular device by which the law creates units lo which it ascribes certain powers. One of the essential requirements of a legal personality is that the personality may, possess status.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The English law recognises two kinds of corporations, viz., corporation aggregate, e.g., a registered company, and corporation sole, e.g., the sovereign.
Different Types of Juristic Persons:
Professor Keeton observes that the juristic person is the personifications of the sum total of legal rules applicable lo a plurality of persons. The conception of juristic personality involves a double fiction, at first by fiction we create a unity and then by a second fiction we attribute to it the wills of individual men. Salmond defines a juristic person as any subject- matter other than a human being to which the law attributes personality.