Legal Subjectivity

Project period: 2024-2028

Legal subjectivity is the gateway to the world of law: in legal proceedings, it is only legal subjects who are treated as autonomous actors holding valid interests. Yet the uniform concept of legal subjectivity conceals disparate functions. Material functions consist, for example, in the legal allocation and acknowledgement of certain interests vis-à-vis particular holders, possibly even providing these interests with minimum protection or giving them greater weight in their balancing against interests not associated with a legal subject. A filter function occurs where certain interests are, from the outset, made legally irrelevant by withholding recognition as a legal subject. A procedural function exists in that legal proceedings can be initiated in which interests held by legal subjects are examined and potentially protected. We encounter an expressive function in that status as a legal subject allows for an increased visibility of certain interests, and framing a legal position as a subject can even have an effect on its legal assessment. How does legal subjectivity relate to very similar concepts (such as legal personhood, rightholdership, legal capacity) and to classification as a legal object (are they mutually exclusive or can an entity fall under both categories?) and what other mechanisms may exist to incorporate interests into the law without allocating them to a legal subject?

The project aims to place legal subjectivity on a conceptual foundation, to apply it to potentially novel candidates for legal subject status (nature, animals, organisms, robots, artificial intelligence, social collectives, works of art), and to question whether it remains appropriate – now and in the future – to divide the world into subjects and objects.