ABSTRACT
When lawyers say that an entity is a legal person, or that it is a subject of the law (these two terms are interchangeable),1 they mean that it has a capacity to enter into legal relations and to have legal rights and duties. In modern systems of municipal law all individuals have legal personality, but in former times slaves had no legal personality; they were simply items of property.2 Companies also have legal personality, but animals do not; although rules are made for the benefit of animals (for example, rules against cruelty to animals), these rules do not confer any rights on the animals.
