Corporations count as legal agents even though they lack subjectivity

Evidence

Moderns tend to think of responsibility for something as being founded on a relation between an act and the law that defines the penalty attaching to its performance or nonperformance. Intention (in the sense of being a subjective cause) may have nothing to do with the matter, as when someone sustains an injury on another’s property because of an accident. Agents need not necessarily coincide with individual biological bodies and the consciousness that is said to go with them. Corporations are both liable under the law and have the power to carry out particular tasks. But the projects of a corporation are distinguished from the intentions of the individuals who work for it and act in its name. Because “corporations never die,” they can be described as agents but not as having subjectivity. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 358

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Distinguishes legal agency from subjective intention — liability without consciousness.
• XREF: Connects to the rights-of-personhood debates and corporate personhood in American jurisprudence.

Related

• Legal agency does not require subjective intention or a human body (similarity 0.94)