Second Language Legal English
Non-native speakers of English easily understand the word person. A person is an individual human being, a man, a woman or a child.
The price of admission is $10 per person
The person who invented the internet is a genius
Every person on this planet deserves to live a happy and healthy life.
It can be used to describe or characterise someone.
I’m not a morning person (or a cat person, or an outdoor person, or a coffee person).
meaning they don’t like mornings, cats, the outdoors, or coffee.
In contrast, the law can recognise non-humans as a person. In law, there are natural persons and legal persons. You will understand natural persons from what I have written above: they are individual human beings. A legal person is a collection of individual humans who make up an entity which is separate and distinct from those humans. The best example of that is a corporation, which has directors, managers and other employees. The corporation (for example, Ford Motor Company Limited) is a person and is a different person from any of its directors, managers and employees. A corporation can enter into contracts and own land in its own name and on its own account.
A corporation may also commit a criminal offence as it is still a person, although there are practical limitations. A corporation cannot drive a car carelessly or start a fight. Courts have had to decide if a statute that refers to a person applies equally to a natural and a legal person. For example, whether a corporation was a person who could attend court to give evidence, or was a person who could hold an auctioneer’s licence (it couldn’t in both cases).
Some words, phrases and uses of person
Person is gender neutral and is therefore helpful to avoid using male-centred words. Use chairperson in place of chairman.
If a party to proceedings appears without a lawyer, they are said to appear in person.
Personal property is all property other than land, buildings and interests in land.
Some documents require personal service. A document is served personally on an individual by leaving it with that individual; on a company by leaving it with a person holding a senior position in the company (a director, the treasurer, secretary, chief executive, manager, or other officer); and on a partnership by leaving it with a partner or person who has control or management of the partnership business at its principal place of business.
A will requires executors and administrators to distribute the property left in a will. Together, they are known as personal representatives.
Persons or people?
In everyday speech, the plural of person is people, but in formal and legal use, the word persons is used. In the first example given,
The price of admission is $10 per person
you could continue
so that would be $40 for four people
not four persons.
But lawyers use the word persons in formal documents. The UK has a statute called the Children and Young Persons Act 2008. It’s not the Children and Young People Act. That style of drafting continues within statutes themselves. The focus is on each person as an individual, even though they may form a larger group of people.
(7) A collecting authority may withdraw a liability notice issued by it by giving notice to that effect in writing to the persons on whom it was served.
A single notice is not served on a group as a whole, but notices are served on individuals. That’s also why we refer to persons of interest (individuals, each of whom is a suspect in a crime) and why the sign reads:
Any person or persons damaging this building will be prosecuted
The law respects the individual, be they young persons or disabled persons, and imposes duties on all persons. It is essential, therefore, if you are drafting a formal document in English to recognise the significance of the word persons. When writing informally, you would use people, but in formal writing, where the focus is on individuals within a group, you would use persons to refer to that group.