Roman Law on legal personality: pro et contra

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study and comparison of the teachings of Roman lawyers regarding the emergence and understanding of the essence of a legal entity as a certain organization of people, as well as providing arguments “for” and “against” its existence as an independent participant in private relations. Attention is drawn to the fact that the current state of the development of civilist thought regarding the development of the category “legal entity” by Roman lawyers indicates the existence of three approaches: 1) Roman lawyers developed and used a legal structure that was different from the citizens of Rome and could participate in the civil turnover of that time; 2) the category of legal entity was not known to Roman lawyers, but the main features characterised to its modern understanding (legal capacity, property separation, the possibility to participate in legal proceedings, etc.) were developed precisely in Ancient Rome; 3) for the jurisprudence of the Roman period, the category “legal entity” or its individual characteristics were not known in the sense that are now attached to the content of the relevant characteristics, but the use of individual constructions, such as “universitas”, “corpus”, “collegia”, “sodalitia”, etc., was intended to show that in private relations, property can exist without being tied to a Roman citizen as a subject of rights.

The analysis of the civil law doctrine of Roman law regarding the doctrine of a legal entity in the context of comparison with the modern understanding of the essence of such a participant in civil relations led to the conclusion that although Roman lawyers did not develop the concept of a legal entity, they proposed its main practical manifestation: the concept of legal capacity, which does not depend on an individual, the concept of legal capacity and the main types of legal entities that were further developed in European jurisprudence (corporations and institutions). The merit of Roman law is the substantiation of the legal way by which a variety of social entities could be introduced into civil turnover.

It is emphasized that although the concept of “legal entity” was not defined by the Roman ancient lawyers, and its essence was not directly studied by them, the idea of expanding the circle of subjects of private law at the expense of special organizations, unions of citizens belongs to the Roman private law. It can be assumed that the very concept of “legal entity” at this stage of historical development was not formed from the point of view of substantive law, but was formed only as a social category, but not as a legal one.