" Sua cuique persona ?" A Note on the Fiction of Legal Personhood and a Reflection on Interdisciplinary Consequences

Abstract

The image of the mask is a well-known metaphor in law. It exemplifies the legal persona in that it both hides the private sphere and at the same time it enables participation in the public sphere by means of the legal personality of the rights-and-duties-bearing person that can effectuate legal standing. But legal personhood is itself a fiction, because it is a construction of law without which human beings would "merely" be individual persons. This fiction is most explicit in the artificial personality of corporations. Historically, the attribution of personhood by law shows that issues surrounding personhood, identity, and, or in relation to, the body often lead to normative and philosophical contestations. These are important to note in view of disciplinary cooperations of the "Law and" kind on the view that conceptual differences in cooperating fields lead to new Babels rather than interdisciplinary successes.