Legal entity

In law, a legal person is an entity endowed with a legal personality, which allows him to be the direct holder of rights and obligations in place of the natural or legal persons who compose it or who created it (for example: businesses, associations)The legal person and the natural person are two of the main entities that can have rights and obligations. The diversity of situations makes it difficult to develop a general definition, but we can define a legal entity as an entity that can be holder of rights and obligations. A legal entity is usually constituted by a combination of persons or companies who wish to accomplish something in common, but it can also be a grouping of goods or of a legal person constituted by the will of a single person. To the difference of persons, there are several named categories of persons, as to form and legal capacity variables. Many legal systems recognize the existence of legal persons, but the rules about them vary a lot from one to the other. They can be created at the initiative of private persons or by public authorities. In the first case, they are subject to private law, and we speak generally of"legal persons of private law". In the second, they are mostly subject to a regime of public law, and one speaks in this case of"legal persons of public law". There are also legal persons in public international law (see on this last point, the subjects of international law). Legal personality gives the corporation many of the attributes granted to persons, such as the name, a heritage, or a home. Legal personality: The legal capacity of legal persons may be more or less extensive. For example, in French law, the law of July confers the legal personality to associations reported. One speaks of the"little personality": this allows the association to collect resources (primarily the contributions of the members, or the potential public subsidies), and to acquire the buildings strictly necessary for the achievement of the goal that it proposes". Any legal person shall be represented by at least one individual who is authorized to engage (president for example), but this responsibility may be shared among many actors, particularly if it is to engage a State as a whole. In its initial drafting, the civil code was unaware of the moral personality, the French law is currently experiencing extremely various corporations. The distinction of the most classic between the legal persons of public law and private law. In French law, a corporation may also be subject to a form of control by another legal person, such as in the case of the administrative supervision. The legal persons governed by public law, are invested of a mission of general interest and holders of the prerogatives of private. They include the State, the territorial communities (communes, departments, regions, communities overseas) and public institutions (schools assistance hospitals, community centres for social assistance, cultural institutions, universities, high schools, some institutions, corporate, chambers of commerce and industry, of trades and crafts, or agriculture). The legal persons subject to private law consist of groups of extremely numerous and diverse that, for the most part, have this peculiarity, that their existence necessarily implies that they acquire legal personality. All branches of private law using the concept of legal entity, and each secretes its own categories.

If some are of a very general nature as a society (civil society, commercial society or agricultural society) and the association, others are mainly to stick to the most common, the civil law (foundations, associations of property owners), commercial law (economic interest groups) or of social law (trade unions, works councils and establishment and committee of hygiene, safety and working conditions).

There is an intermediate category, persons of mixed legal systems, which borrow elements at the public law and private law. As a result, some public institutions (state-owned enterprises, services, industrial and commercial) see their activity governed by private law when, on the other hand, legal persons organically under private law are invested with prerogatives of public power (colleges, certain associations). Under quebec law, corporations have legal personality, that is to say, they may be the owners, in the same way as physical persons, rights and obligations. The civil Code of Quebec, divides the people legal entities in legal entities of"public law"or"private law". If the persons are generally subject to public law and the second in private law, the great majority of legal rules are similar for the two categories, contrary to the French right. In Quebec, the legal personality must be provided for in a law For example, the following entities benefit from the corporate personality.