Rights and Duties and Persons

by William Wright

So you think you're a person

How can you be sure?  First, you can confirm how the word is defined:

person 1 an individual human being.  2 the living body of a human being.
-The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th Ed., s.v. "person"

Congratulations, you are a person – in the context of the above definition.   But are there other contexts where different definitions apply?  If there are, and you start thinking you are a person in a context where you are not, things will become very confusing for you.  For example, you probably live in a society governed by a legal system.  This legal system continues to function whether you care to pay attention to it or not.  The concept of 'person' within your legal system likely has a somewhat different application than in the above context.  Being unaware of this reality greatly limits your options within that system.  So what's the big difference?  Let's look:

person 3. law. Any human being, corporation, or body politic having legal rights and duties.
-The Students' Standard Dictionary, 1910, s.v. "person"

also,

"Persons are of two classes only – natural persons and legal persons. A natural person is a human being that has the capacity for rights or duties." A legal person is anything to which the law gives a legal or fictional existence or personality, with capacity for rights or duties.
-The Dictionary of Canadian Law, 2nd ed., s.v. "person"

Without rights and duties, the law cannot see you

It is legal rights and duties that make you a person in the eyes of the law.  Having rights and duties for the purposes of one law does not necessarily make you a person for the purposes of a different law..

EXAMPLE: In 1918, women in Canada were not allowed to vote. They could not vote because - based on the definition of the term 'person' in the 1906 Dominion Elections Act - female persons were not capable of having rights and duties for the purposes of voting. It was only when the definition of the term 'person' was changed to include female persons, that women became capable of having rights and duties for the purposes of that Act.

"... the expression "person" or "male person", or any similar expression, shall include a female person, unless a different meaning is required by the context or by the terms of this Act."
- An Act to confer the Electoral Franchise Upon Women, 8-9 GEORGE V. 1919, c. 20.

Each law has a different set of eyes.  Canadian women were persons capable of rights and duties in the eyes of some laws in 1918, but not in the eyes of the 1906 Dominion Elections Act.

Based on this understanding, if fence posts were recognized as capable of having legal rights and duties, then they would be recognized as persons in law. This isn't as ridiculous as it sounds when you consider that corporations, which have no actual physical existence at all, are considered persons.

The only reason you are able to be a person for legal purposes is because you are recognized as being capable of having legal rights and duties. That's it; if you are not so capable, you are not a person in this context. If you are so capable then congratulations once again; not only are you a human being, but you are also recognized as a person in law.

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