Capacity (law)

Law talks about people, who have certain rights, and certain obligations. These people can then perform actions under the law. Lawyers call this capacity.

These subjects of the law are:

• Natural people
• Legal entities such as associations or. companies
• International law is about groups of people

The law says, who has these rights. As an example, in Roman law, slaves did not have these rights.

Note also, that while a person may have certain of these rights, he or she might not have all of them. That way, there's a minimum legal age people must have to be able to consent to sexual activity (called age of consent, usually). People must also have a certain minimum age to drink alcohol, or to own a firearm. Also, the law can say that certain people only have limited rights, and another person needs to take certain decisions for them (usually called guardianship).