Legal Identity

Legal identity is the essential way into understanding the relationship between the individual and the state, and between individuals and the legal entities of a society. It is what confers on a person the legal standing that qualifies them to acquire rights and to bear obligations. Legal identity has been recognized since the rise of modern law, but the changes of our age — technological and digital above all — have set the concept before us again with new content that calls for study and for grounding.

One: What legal identity is, and what it does

Legal identity may be defined as the formal recognition of a natural or juridical person as an independent party holding the legal capacity to enter into relations that produce legal effects. It differs from social or cultural identity: the first describes a person according to the legal system, not according to their affiliations or personal characteristics.

The essential office of legal identity is to enable persons to deal with one another within the regulatory framework, and to give them the standing to invoke the law, whether as to rights or as to responsibilities.

Two: The elements of legal identity

Legal identity rests on a number of elements that are essential to its existence, chief among them:

• Legal personality, the pivotal element, consisting in recognition of the person by the legal system as one to whom its provisions are addressed. It is of two kinds:
• The natural person: the living human being, from birth until death.
• The juridical person: an entity on which the law confers an independent personality, such as companies and associations.
• The legal name: the principal means of identification, established in the official registers, such as the national identity card or the commercial register.
• The legal domicile: the place at which a person is addressed in law, which matters in questions of service and of litigation.
• Nationality (for natural persons): determined by national law, and gives rise to obligations and rights toward the state.
• Legal capacity, which divides into:
• Capacity of obligation: a person's fitness to acquire rights and bear obligations.
• Capacity of performance: the ability to exercise those rights oneself.
• Legal standing: affecting a person's position — guardian, agent, manager, member and so on — in the legal relationship in dispute or in question.

Three: The legal identity of natural and juridical persons

a. Natural persons: their legal personality begins at live birth and is established through civil status documents — the birth certificate, the identity card, the passport. This identity qualifies them to enter into every legal act, provided the condition of capacity is met.

b. Juridical persons: their legal personality arises under applicable regulations or under license, as with companies and associations. It is established through the official register and the memorandum of association. Rights and duties attach to them independently of their owners.

Four: The legal effects of identity

• An independent patrimony: legal identity gives give rise to an independent patrimony, particularly in the case of juridical persons.
• The right to litigate: legal identity confers on a person the right to resort to the courts, to bring claims and to defend themselves.
• Rights and obligations under applicable regulations: the person becomes one to whom the provisions of applicable regulations are addressed, both as to rights (ownership and disposal) and as to obligations (performance of contracts and civil liability).
• Contractual relations: no contract, assignment or sale is valid except from one holding a recognized legal identity.

Five: The restriction and loss of legal identity

Loss of legal identity

• For natural persons: by actual death or by a judgment of presumed death.
• For juridical persons: by the extinction of the personality, as through merger, dissolution or bankruptcy.

Restriction of legal identity

• Interdiction of a minor or of one lacking capacity.
• Suspension of a juridical person's activity by judicial or administrative decision.

Six: The modern difficulties of legal identity

• Digital identity: proving identity in the digital setting has become vital, and calls for legal adaptation — particularly in electronic dealings, in verifying digital signatures, and in protecting personal data.
• Legal identity across borders: multiple nationalities raise difficulties in determining the law applicable to a person or an entity.
• Refugees and the stateless: the absence of official documents bars legal recognition of them.

Legal identity is not merely a document. It is the cornerstone of building justice, securing rights and ordering relations. Developing the systems that protect and establish it, and easing the means of obtaining it, is therefore among the requirements of justice in our time — for individuals and for entities alike.