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Zusatztext [Naffine] convincingly argues that law is not a self-contained system, but one that frequently looks beyond purely legal conventions and norms in order to construct the concept of legal personhood. Readers who are looking for a well organized discussion of the (often schizophrenic) way in which the positive law appropriates extra-legal conceptions of human nature would do well to rely upon Naffine's guidance. Informationen zum Autor Ngaire Naffine is Emerita Professor of Law at Adelaide, Australia. Klappentext The perennial question posed by the philosophically-inclined lawyer is "What is law?" or perhaps "What is the nature of law?" This book poses an associated (but no less fundamental) question about law which has received much less attention in the legal literature. This question is: "Who is law for?" Whenever people go to law, they are judged for their suitability as legal persons. They are given or refused rights and duties on the basis of ideas about who matters. These ideas are basic to legal-decision making. They form the intellectual and moral underpinning of legal thought. They help to determine whether law is essentially for rational human beings, or whether it also speaks to and for human infants, adults with impaired reasoning, the comatose, fetuses, and even animals. Are these the right kind of beings to enter legal relationships and so become legal persons? Are they considered sufficiently rational, sacred, or simply human? Is law meant for them? This book reveals and evaluates the type of thinking that goes into these fundamental legal and metaphysical determinations about who should be capable of bearing legal rights and duties. It identifies and analyzes four influential ways of thinking about legal persons, each with its own metaphysical suppositions. One approach derives from rationalist philosophy, a second from religion, a third from evolutionary biology, while the fourth is strictly legalistic and so endeavors to eschew metaphysics altogether. The book offers a clear, coherent, and critical account of these complex moral and intellectual processes entailed in the making of legal persons. Zusammenfassung The book offers a clear, coherent and critical account of these complex moral and intellectual processes entailed in the making of legal persons. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. The Question: Who is Law For? Is this the Right Question? The Question Disputed Matching Law to Life: the Question Affirmed Competing Views of Human Nature and their Implications for Law The Concept of the Person and its Problematic Nature Instability of the Concept of the Legal Person Social Significance of the Concept and its Implications for Justice Law's Changing Community of Persons The Mission Finding the Legal Person 2. The Debate: Legalists v Realists The Positions The Legalists The Metaphysical Realists The Rationalists The Religionists The Naturalists Setting the Boundaries of Personhood Disciplinary Influences The Thinkers and their Creation Stories Etymology of Persons 3. Strictly Legal Persons The Person as a Purely Legal Creation Law as a Closed System The Legal Person as Legal Language Use Hart and Wittgenstein Keeping the Legal Legal 4. Loosening the Strictures The Legal Person as a Cluster Concept Division Between Persons and Property Chameleon Nature of Personality Strictly Conceived The Legalist's Person in the Courtroom Can We be Strict about Persons? Hohfeld on Legal Conceptions Real Uses of Persons 5. Moral Agents and Responsibility Creation Story The Legal and the Philosophical Person Influence of Kant Gray on Legal Persons and the Rational Will Will Theory of the Person Respect for Persons and Responsibility The Legal Subject of Criminal Law Two Criminal Legal Thinkers The Uncompro...
