ABSTRACT
The ‘Law of Persons’ does not necessarily have a clear delimitation in contemporary legal theory. It is not easily imagined what it might mean to construct a legal person, what function it has in jurisprudence or how it might exist independently of more abstract concepts such as the legal subject. Modern jurisprudence typically maintains that the key distinction for personal jurisdiction is that between ‘natural persons’ and ‘corporations’. But since the ‘natural person’ has been increasingly traced onto the notion of the ‘human’, jurisprudence is left with a few problems. Firstly, how does one account for the variety of legal personae which are neither natural nor unnatural and their distinct constructed functions and capacities at law-the personal status of minors, incompetent persons, gendered personae, etc? What can one make of the localized and discrete forums of judgment which may still address them? Secondly, where does it leave the status of the many jurisdictions exercised with respect to non-human (and non-corporate) subjects of law? Today, the jurisdiction with respect to the rights of ‘humans’, has become an overarching and universalizing forum. Given this fact, it is not surprising that a vast array of minor entities that do not qualify as human should find themselves, not just in uncertain positions within legal institutions, but also in an increasingly privileged position with respect to the contours of a jurisprudence of ‘personality’.
