#24 Maitland on the science of Jurisprudence

Concepts of real, natural, artificial and corporate persons

Deeply convinced though our lawyers may be that individual men are the only ‘real’ and ‘natural’ persons, they are compelled to find some phrase which places State and Man upon one level. “The greatest of all artificial persons, politically speaking, is the State’”: so we may read in an excellent First Book of Jurisprudence [Sir Frederick Pollock]. Asce…