Unit 7- Legal Subjects Flashcards
What do legal rules do?
Legal rules impose duties upon and assign competences and rights to legal subject
What are the 2 main categories of legal subjects?
- Natural persons
- Legal person
Legal personhood for natural persons
- Human beings have legal personhood since birth
- When they die most of their rights and duties go into probate, except some which shall cease
- Property rights are not extinguished but are passed down on heirs
Are embryos considered natural persons?
No they are not
When do people acquire legal capacity to act?
When they reach the majority age of their respected jurisdiction
What are the two types of incapacitated persons
- Protective incapacity (minors, impaired or disabled)
- Punitive incapacity (legal disquaification)
Characteristics of minors
- Attain the capacity to act when they reach mayority
- Lack the capacity to act and enter a valid contract
- To access capacity to act –> emancipation granted by court
Characteristics of legal acts by minors
- There’s a threshold (7 years) under which contracts entered by a minor are null
- They have limited contractual capacity
What are the two types of incapacitated adults?
- Protective incapacities: impaired or disabled adults
- Punitive incapacities: legal disabilities (conviction for committing a crime)
Characteristics of legal acts by incapacitated adults
- Contracts entered into by an incapacitated adult are invalid in the same term like minors
- Legal systems tend to be set forth special requirements under which contracts are deemed valid
What are legal representatives in civil law jurisdiction?
They can be delegated the power to enter into legal transactions on behalf of a minor
What are legal representatives in common law?
Common law jurisdiction traditionally don’t acknowledge any legal representative of minors or incapacitated adults, they appoint a deputy to act case by case on behalf of a minor or incapacitated adult
What is incapacity de facto?
Legal transaction performed by an adult is temporarily impaired by drunkenness, drug abuse…
When can incapacity de facto be avoided?
- The disorder was so serios that it fully neglected the capacity to form contractual will
- Dealing with a contract the counterpart was in bad faith
What is the legal rationale to protect consumers?
Based on the notion of market failures, such as inequalities of bargaining power between a consumer and a business and information asymmetries
What is the notion of consumers
“A consumer is a natural person who is acting outside the scope of an economic activity”
What has been the effect of consumers?
Has become the factor triggering the application of a distinct set of rules known as consumer law
What happens with mixed jurisdictions when it comes to consumers?
When consumption concludes for both professional and personal purposes, it becomes controversial
What is dual purpose of contract
To establish if the natural person is acting as a consumer or a provider in the contract
What happens if a natural person is acting predominantly under the identity of its business?
They cannot be protected under consumer law since the legislator wouldn’t see them as consumers in need for protection
What are legal entities under private law divided into?
- Corporations
- Unincorporated legal entities
What are the characteristics of corporations?
- Completely autonomous entity
- Discrete personality
- Separate the owners as to their management
What are the characteristics of unincorporated legal entities?
- Collection of individuals
- Share property to some extent
- More personal liability
What are rules on liability/ agency?
By its nature, a legal entity, being fictitious can act through the agency of natural persons
What are the three areas of interaction in rules of agency?
- Agents and principles (internal relationship)
- Agents and the third parties with whom they deal on their principal’s behalf (external)
- Principals and the third parties where the agents deal
What happens if there is ‘defect in consent’ (mistake or fraud)?
The state of mind taken into consideration is the one of the agents because they are the natural person who acted on behalf of the legal entity
Characteristics of non profit ORGANISATIONS
- Established to further a social cause
- Partly exempted from taxation
- Prohibited from distributing their income to shareholders, leaders or members
Two types of non-profit CORPORATIONS
- Foundations (corporation soles)
- Association: corporation aggregates
What are the two constitutional documents?
Memorandum of association and articles of association: the key constitutional document of a company, which inter alia spells out its name, its purpose, and its capital
Bylaws: The constitutional document that defines the internal structure and regulate the functions and decision- making processes of its bodies
What legal entities of private law divided into?
- Incorporated businesses
- Unincorporated businesses
What are the two types of incorporated businesses?
- Join stock company/ public limited company (PLC)
Ownership is subdivided into shares that are fully transferable and can be quoted and tradable on stock exchange
Can’t be managed directly by the shareholders - Limited liability company
Shares are not tradable on stock exchange
Can be managed by shareholders
