Ma Chi Associate Professor, School of Law, Tianjin University of Commerce. After distinguishing between the basic position of the concept of legal subjects such as realism-non-simple qualification theory-cluster theory, we strive to develop a set of legal subject concepts based o

2025/07/2822:09:58 technology 1284

Machi Tianjin Business University Law School Associate Professor

What is the legal subject? Who can become the legal subject? After distinguishing the basic positions of the concepts of legal subjects such as Realism - Not Simple Qualification Theory - Cluster Theory, we strive to develop a set of legal subject concepts based on Hofield's rights and obligations theory, and roughly divide the legal subject qualifications into three categories: power, ability to act, and ability to obligate. Among them, the qualification for the ability to qualify is not based on the possession of will, but it must be based on the independent respect of the law; the ability to act and obligations must be based on the possession of will. In this case, if emerging entities such as fetuses, animals, and natural environments obtain independent respect from the law, even if they lack the complete will, they will not lose the opportunity to obtain rights, even though they are difficult to have the ability to act and obligation. Artificial Intelligence has obvious tool attributes and lacks the reason to be respected independently by the law, so it cannot become a real legal subject like a biological human. The fictional subject is an artificial term that is fictionalized to simplify language expression, and is not the ultimate bearer of rights and obligations; based on the consideration of expressiveness and thinking, it is not ruled out that artificial intelligence can become the fictional subject like legal persons, gods, and dead.

This article is a special study on the common and basic legal concept of legal subjects in the sense of legal theory. In the context of this article, there is no difference between legal subjects and legal persons, legal subject qualifications and legal personhood. A legal subject or a legal person probably refers to the bearers of legal rights and obligations. For an entity X, if you have the legal subject qualification or legal personality, you will become a legal subject or legal person.

Who can become the legal subject? From the historical perspective of the development of human legal system, the extension of the legal subject should be a process of gradual expansion. In Roman law , only adult men who meet specific conditions are the complete legal subjects, and women, young children, and slaves are not legal subjects. After a long historical evolution and theoretical disputes, the legal subject of modern law has been expanded to all biological humans and created a fictional subject such as legal persons. Today, a large number of emerging "candidates" of legal entities have emerged, such as fetuses, dead, animals, natural environment and even artificial intelligence. Obviously, the study of whether emerging subjects are legal subjects—whether they have happened in the past, are now in progress, and may still appear in the future—the concept theory of legal subjects must certainly be helpful and even decisive. There is a very simple and obvious set of argumentation logic here: if it is necessary to confirm not only the subject qualifications of a certain type of specific object, but the emerging subject problems that are constantly emerging, then the concept theory of legal subjects that transcends the perspective of a specific object in the sense of legal theory can tell us what a legal subject is, through observation of the candidate, it can be determined whether it belongs to the legal subject.

However, it is doubtful that the current understanding of the concept of legal subjects in the jurisprudence community has reached a very reliable level, so that it is enough to be regarded as common sense in jurisprudence knowledge, and then immediately enough to provide effective assistance to emerging subject problems. Or even if this theory is very reliable, based on the special content of this theory, it actually cannot answer the question of who can become the legal subject (as the supporters of the "legalism-empty slot theory" mentioned later believe). In any case, it is necessary to discuss the concept theory of legal subjects at this time, and on this basis it is explored its possible help to emerging subject issues.

Within the scope of legal theory, the theory of the concept of legal subject has not reached a consensus on at least three important issues. The first dispute is that the acquisition of legal subject qualifications is entirely subject to the provisions of the law, or whether it is subject to constraints or restrictions by the concept of legal subject itself or other external considerations. This is the opposition between statutoryism and realism.The second dispute is whether the legal subject qualification is simply a qualification for rights and obligations, or does it contain other content? This is the opposite of the (simple) theory of rights, obligations, qualifications and not simple statements. The third dispute is whether the legal subject qualification is completely invisible or in degree? Or, is there an incomplete or partial subject? This is the opposition between holistic theory and cluster theory. If you want to answer the basic question of "what can become a legal subject", or even further answer the questions of emerging subjects in detail, it is impossible not to deal with the above disputes.

This article will support the view of realism-not simple qualification theory-cluster theory, and take this as the basic position to discuss the conceptual minimum accommodation and limitation of legal subjects by different types of rights and obligations - the key lies in the independent reason and will factor that is respected by the law. Regarding emerging subjects, the basic view of the article is that the entity that the concept of legal subjects may accommodate is conceptually sufficient to exceed the scope of biological humans, and the historical trend of legal subjects being continuously expanded is difficult to be restrained in theory. However, due to the influence of the types of rights and obligations on the concept of legal subjects, the expansion of subjects is not without boundaries, and the argument that "everything can be legal subjects" should be rejected.

1. Theoretical differences in the concept of legal subject

(I) Legalism and Realism

For the question of "who can become a legal subject", the simplest and powerful answer is that no matter what the legal subject means, the real law stipulates that who is the subject and who is the subject. The sufficient and necessary condition for causing a certain X to become a legal subject is that the law recognizes X's legal subject status - this is Legalism. Legalist propositions are not patents for the concept of legal subjects, and behind them is a basic understanding of legal concepts and even the nature of the law. According to this view, law comes from the creation of human will and is a tool used by humans to accomplish their value or purpose. In this case, the content of the law is completely subject to human will, and the various legal concepts involved are nothing more than technical devices in the entire legal machine, and they do not contain any principled requirements. Of course, this does not mean that the process of the legal concept exerting its function as a technical device has no rules at all, but the rules or rules here do not take precedence over the will contained in the law, and the legal concept still serves the functions or goals specified by the legislator to a large extent.

Specifically for the concept of legal subject, legalism advocates that the concept of legal subject itself is empty and is arbitrarily plugged and pulled empty slots (empty plot) by legislators. Any entity, as long as the law stipulates, whether it is biological humans, communities, animals, flowers and plants, rocks, or artificial intelligence, may become the legal subject. In the view of statutoryism, the history of the development of the legal system and some traditional theories have proved the above facts. In Roman law, the initial meaning of the subject is the mask worn by the performers in the theater performance. Therefore, the so-called legal qualifications are just various qualifications (masks) distributed by the law and have no necessary connection with people in the biological sense. Therefore, although the slaves in Roman law were biological humans, they were not legal subjects. Not only that, in the long history of humans, supernatural main gods, animals, objects, and societies outside of biological humans have been regarded as or are still legal subjects by certain legal systems. As long as the legislator wants, he can wear the mask of the legal subject on any type of entity. At this time, what the legislator needs to consider is not the concept of a legal subject, but once an entity is given a subject qualification, the way the law treats the entity has changed; so the legislator must consider whether he really intends to treat the entity in a specific way? This is a legal policy consideration that comes from outside the concept of legal subject. The concept of legal subject does not have the ability to participate in the policy decisions of legislators. It is nothing more than a conceptual tool to implement the will of legislators.

Can legalism be accepted? The first thing to attack legalism was the German civil law , which was influenced by Kant ism.Savini mentioned that "all laws exist because of inner freedom and morality, which is accompanied by all humans (Mensch). This is why the concept of a legal person or legal subject in the original sense is exactly the same as that of humans. The original consistency of the two concepts can be expressed in the following way: each individual human, and only individual humans, enjoys the power of rights." According to this statement, the concept of a legal subject does not come from the law itself, but from the external standard of a certain "what counts as a human", especially the projection of the ethical standard in the law. The civil law community generally believes that Kant's ethics has influenced the concept of civil law power (Rechtsf Higkeit): Kant's ethics regards reason as a constitutive condition of "people", so all rational ones are human. The ability to power also reflects the values of egalitarianism. According to this view, although Roman law did on the surface set a legal system in which slaves did not have legal subject qualifications, this setting was wrong or inappropriate.

Savigny and German Civil Law have a very representative and influential understanding of legal subjects. The provisions on the specific content of legal subjects in modern law (such as stipulating that all biological people are legal subjects) basically reflect this influence. But their criticism of statutoryism is not entirely sufficient. Putting aside the complex meaning of the word Person, why do we have to believe that the meaning of the legal subject (person) is exactly the same as that of the person in the ethics , so that the former must obey the requirements of the latter? Legalism regards the concept of law as a technical tool. As artificial language , this conceptual tool is not necessary to be consistent with natural language or even artificial languages in other fields. To take a step back, even if the legislator must abide by the ethical definition of human beings and then regard slaves as human beings, it only puts forward some moral requirements on the legislator rather than on the concept of legal subjects. You can say that the legislator did not stipulate slaves as the legal subject, which is a very evil provision, so that the legislator did do something wrong; but you can't say that due to this moral error, slaves are actually still the subject in Roman law, so that the arrangement of real law is stupid.

Therefore, it points out the critical approach that legalism may lead to moral errors, or it will inevitably argue about specific legal policy considerations such as "how the law should treat X", or at most it is just accusing statutoryism of being a theory that is easily abused by lawmakers. Although there are many reasonable points, it is difficult to constitute a fatal blow to statutoryism. To oppose statutoryism, we must prove that statutoryism's claim that "everything can be the subject" based on the internal perspective of juris itself (rather than external standards such as ethics), will lead to some entities that "cannot" have legal subject qualifications having subject qualifications - the "cannot" here are conceptual, not moral. If statutoryism insists on allowing legislators to define certain entities as legal subjects, then it may make not only evil moral errors, but also a category error that is difficult for people to accept intellectually.

In this regard, this kind of thinking is often regarded as a more effective blow to statutoryism: the legal subject is the bearer of legal rights and obligations, and only entities that can bear rights and obligations can be granted the qualification of legal subjects. According to some scholars, fundamentally speaking, the legal order is the order of biological humans, and only biological humans can bear rights and obligations. Therefore, through the concept of rights and obligations, the concept of legal subject is limited to the scope of biological humans. The key to this idea is not to argue whether the legal subject can only be a biological person, but to how to use the statement of the legal rights and obligations to limit the scope of the legal subject. If the legal subject is the bearer of legal rights and obligations, then as the "bearer of legal rights and obligations" (rather than an ethical person or other person), its conceptual connotation will no longer be empty, and the extension of the subject concept will be restricted, thus breaking out of the statutory-empty trough theory.

The above position can be called Realist.Both internal realism and external realism oppose the legalism of "everyone can do it", and both emphasize that the extension setting of the legal subject is subject to some "objective" restrictions, so it is "realism". But what the "internal" realism emphasizes is that the concept of subject should first be the conceptual theory within law, and at the same time be influenced by the mutual relationship between concepts, rather than immediately appealing to the specific moral arguments of external realism. External realism will inevitably discuss the question of how a particular entity (such as an animal) should be treated by law. It cannot provide a more general answer to "who can become the legal subject" and is likely to be diluted by ethical and political knowledge from outside law. Moreover, internal realism advocates that objective limitations on the extension of legal subjects come from conceptual considerations within law, which will become prerequisites that must be respected by external moral considerations. Without these limitations, the theoretical resources introduced by external realism will likely conflict with existing knowledge in law. In this sense, internal realism and external realism are not strictly mutually exclusive, but logically sequential. At the operational level, internal realism does not exclude specific considerations from external realism's claims, but is nothing more than delaying this consideration. Therefore, in general, if legal theory is still willing to regard legal subjects as basic legal concepts with unique value, it should first be devoted to a minimum internal realism in any case.

After confirming the basic position of internal realism, it is naturally necessary to explain: (1) The legal subject is the bearer of legal rights and obligations. What does this statement mean? (2) How will it specifically restrict the concept of legal subject? The other two disputes involved in this section are related to the first issue, and the third part of the article will address the second issue.

(II) The qualification theory of rights and obligations and non-simple qualification theory

If the legal subject is the bearer of legal rights and obligations, then who is qualified to bear legal rights and obligations is the legal subject. In the English-speaking world, from Austin, Gray to Salmond, the right and obligation qualifications have been adhered to. In domestic jurisprudence teaching and research, the theory of rights and obligations is also the most common, but the statement of legal rights and obligations is paralleled with legal relationship , and it refers to people who enjoy the right to fulfill their obligations in legal relations. The qualification theory of rights and obligations clearly distinguishes the qualification to assume rights and obligations and the specific rights and obligations themselves. This means that when an entity X enjoys subject qualifications, it becomes a legal subject, but this subject qualification is not a specific legal right and obligation. For example, biological humans enjoy subject qualifications, which makes them possible to assume specific rights and obligations, such as property rights, but they are only likely to enjoy property rights, and they do not necessarily enjoy property rights, because they may be penniless and do not actually own any property.

The right and obligation qualification theory distinguishes the qualification to assume rights and obligations from the rights and obligations themselves, and equates the legal subject with the former. Since people can easily distinguish rights and obligations from the qualification to assume rights and obligations in concept, the right and obligation qualification theory is integrally consistent and self-consistent. However, the problem is not that simple. The right and obligation qualification theory is actually in conflict with people's intuitive understanding of the concept of legal subjects. This conflict can be understood from the following two aspects:

First, the problem with the right and obligation qualification theory is that this concept must logically allow the existence of such legal subjects: the legal subject X is qualified to assume legal rights and obligations, but for some reasons, it actually has not yet assumed any rights and obligations, and is just an "empty shell" qualified to accommodate rights and obligations. In this case, can people feel at ease and boldly regard this "empty shell" as having legal subject qualifications?

Secondly, if there is an entity X, it only has the qualification to assume obligations and therefore assumes certain legal obligations, can it be regarded as the legal subject? This kind of X is not only logically possible, but also existed in the real legal system.In some slave states in the United States, slaves were bound by criminal law, and criminal slaves still faced severe criminal sanctions, but "slaves do not have legal personality (subject qualification)" seems to be common sense in the legal system and legal theory. On the contrary, young children or mentally abnormal people in modern law have the qualifications to assume rights and enjoy certain rights, but are not qualified to assume legal obligations and therefore bear legal responsibilities, but are considered to have the qualifications of legal subjects.

If we can determine that in fact the "empty shell" that does not assume any rights and obligations is not the legal subject, and the "unlucky guy" that only assumes obligations is not the legal subject, but the entity that only has the qualifications for rights and enjoys certain rights is the legal subject. All these statements do not make any category mistakes. They are correct and natural expressions of the relevant legal subject, then it is probably necessary to admit that the statement that simply understands the legal subject as the qualification to assume rights and obligations should be insufficient. The truth contained in the above statement is relatively obvious: in addition to the qualification to assume rights and obligations, an entity may be regarded as a legal subject only if it has enjoyed certain rights (not qualifications). Different from the (simple) right and obligation qualification theory, this view can be called a non-simple theory. The main reason why

supports non-simple statements is that the concept of legal subjects contains some at least respect for those with subject qualifications. Simple rights, obligations, qualifications or obligations are not enough to match this respect. In the legal system, only by allowing an entity to actually enjoy certain rights is the minimum respect for it. Still from a historical perspective, the continuous expansion of the extension of the legal subject is actually the result of the continuous expansion of the concept of "what deserves legal respect". If the law does not intend to respect or treat an entity well, it does not need to regard it as a legal subject, even if it requires that entity bear certain legal obligations. It is easy to see that when a slave obtains legal personality, he first obtains real rights such as the right to life and the right to freedom , not just the qualifications regarding the right to life or the right to freedom, nor is he already possessed of the legal obligations he may have had before.

It is worth emphasizing that at the general theoretical level, it can only be concluded that the concept of legal subject requires that those who are regarded as subjects gain minimum respect from the law through enjoying rights (hereinafter referred to as minimum rights), and cannot determine the content of the minimum rights caused by this respect. I will not argue that only by enjoying the right to life or freedom can one be called a legal subject; what minimum rights can be enjoyed as a legal subject still depend on the specific provisions of the actual law, and it is difficult to preset in the sense of legal theory.

Therefore, according to non-simple theory, the connotation of the concept of legal subject has become richer. It contains at least two parts, one is the qualification to enjoy other rights and obligations, and the other is the minimum rights enjoyed by the subject. This richness and diversity of rights and obligations themselves provide the basis for the cluster theory of the concept of legal subjects, which involves the dispute between holism and cluster theory.

(III) Holism and Clusterism

Is the legal subject a holistic concept or a cluster or degree concept? The holistic claim is that the legal subject is an indecomposed whole, and a certain entity is either a legal subject or not a legal subject, and there is no such thing as a partial legal subject qualification or a local legal subject qualification. Assuming legal rights and obligations is an indescribable whole, and it cannot be distinguished from bearing this (class) rights and obligations and that (class) rights and obligations. An entity X is a legal subject if it is qualified to assume any rights and obligations and which has certain minimum rights (in simple terms), and if it does not enjoy any rights or is not a subject. As for what (category) rights and obligations are assumed or what minimum rights are enjoyed, it seems to be irrelevant to the concept of whether it constitutes a subject or subject.The concept of "capacity of rights" in traditional civil law theory also shows that ability of rights, as the civil subject, has completeness, and once a biological person is born, he has equal capacity for rights.

From the perspective of logical self-consistent , there is no problem with the holistic claim. But the more obvious fact is that in many legal systems, different legal subjects are indeed often classified due to their respective different rights and obligations or different rights and obligations, thus forming different types of legal subjects. For example: (1) In Roman law, the three qualities of freedom, civil rights, and patriarchal rights are distinguished; the right to freedom distinguishes between free people and slaves, civil rights distinguishes between Roman citizens and foreign countries, and patriarchal rights distinguishes between father and son. Only when you have three qualifications at the same time can you enjoy sufficient personality and be a full legal subject, otherwise you will be a reduced personality, etc. (2) In modern law, both legal persons and natural persons are legal subjects, but there are still differences between the two as legal subjects. (3) Adults and young children are both legal subjects, but there are differences between the two. These categories occupy a very obvious and important position in the theory of legal subjects and related systems. If a certain theory about the concept of legal subjects cannot explain them well, it will obviously not be completely satisfactory. In civil law, even if people believe that all biological humans have equal rights and abilities based on a certain moral-ethical concept, they have to face different types of legal subjects and develop conceptual tools such as "character capacity" to distinguish the differences between different legal subjects. Therefore, in order to take care of the traditional theory and practice of subject concepts in law, and to effectively explain the differences between different subjects with the help of subject concept theory, holism is probably not the optimal choice (although it cannot be said that it is wrong yet).

Go further, if you want to find a theoretical basis for internal realism, holism is probably not the best choice. Because if the qualifications to assume different legal rights and obligations cannot be classified and processed, then it is necessary to find the commonality of all rights and obligations, and explore on this basis what requirements does this commonality put forward for the concept of legal subjects. To find the commonality of all legal rights and obligations, it is either too controversial to be easily challenged, or because this commonality is too thin to materially affect the concept of legal subjects.

Thus, the advantages of cluster theory are revealed. The basic understanding of the concept of legal subjects in cluster theory is that legal subject qualifications are decomposed and have "cluster" attributes. Legal subject qualifications are composed of various elements, so that legal subjects will exist in a degree rather than in all. Legal subject qualifications are therefore not single, but can be broken down into many qualifications of different degrees or types. And between completely lacking the subject qualification and complete subject qualification, there are different degrees of personality qualification, or there is an intermediate state of "partial possession". According to the definition of the previous article not simply qualification, it can be inferred that what is completely unqualified is the state of not enjoying any qualification for the assumption of rights and obligations (and of course not enjoying any minimum rights) or enjoying some rights and obligations but not having minimum rights; a complete subject qualification is to enjoy all minimum rights and qualifications for the assumption of all rights and obligations; given that the two are partly qualified for the assumption of subject qualifications.

Within the scope of this article, the biggest advantage of cluster theory is that after distinguishing different degrees or different types of legal subject qualifications, the conceptual conditions required for these different subject qualifications are different. The question of "who can become a legal subject" will be decomposed into the question of "who can become what legal subject". Such a discussion will be more specific and full. But before this, the question that needs to be solved is how to distinguish these different types or degrees of legal subject qualifications? Whether it is the qualification of at least rights or rights and obligations, the legal subject is related to the assumption of rights and obligations.It can be imagined that different types of legal subject qualifications can be distinguished according to the differences in the ability to assume different rights and obligations; or it can be said that the types of rights and obligations will distinguish different types of legal subject qualifications. Based on different classification methods of rights and obligations, the clustering elements that clustering theory can logically accommodate are infinite. For example, we can simply distinguish the qualifications of legal subjects into the qualifications to enjoy rights and the qualifications to assume obligations, or according to the departmental law type that stipulates rights and obligations, and divide the legal subjects into the qualifications of civil law subjects, criminal law subjects, administrative law subjects, administrative law subjects, etc. In Roman law, subject qualifications are divided into three qualifications: freedom, civil rights, and patriarchal rights. The civil law tradition of the civil law system distinguishes (civil) legal subjects into power and capacity for conduct, both of which can be regarded as determining the elements contained in the qualification of legal subjects based on different standards.

Here, the article introduces the semantics classification theory of legal rights and obligations since Hofield. Based on eight different types of rights and obligations, the qualification types for assuming these rights and obligations are formed. The advantage of Hofield's theory lies in its universality. This means that the above eight types of rights and obligations are not unique to any departmental law or law in a specific time and space. It embodies a certain unchanging deep structure in the legal theory. Moreover, through the distinction and superposition between different elements, it can explain all possible rights and obligations in a conceptual sense. The legal subject elements determined based on this naturally have the universality required by law theory.

It can be imagined that Hofield distinguishes rights and obligations into eight types. So a straightforward solution is to set qualifications for each type of rights and obligations, thereby forming eight different rights and obligations qualifications, and then analyze these eight different subject qualifications and determine their inherent prescriptiveness. However, this practice lacks economicality. Because there are certain similarities between the eight rights and obligation qualifications, similar rights and obligation qualifications can be merged, so that the legal subject elements will be obtained will be much less than eight types. Ultimately, the elements of the legal subject will be divided into three main types: ability to power, ability to act and ability to obligate. It should be emphasized that although these terms are common terms in the theory of legal subjects, the following discussion is not a sorting out the existing usage of these terms, but rather, based on Hofield's theory as an analytical framework, constructively giving them a meaning that is close to the traditional meaning but not exactly the same as that of the traditional meaning.

2. Internal realism based on different types of rights and obligations

(I) Capacity of rights

Traditional civil law regards rights abilities as the ability to assume civil rights and obligations. In the context of Chinese jurisprudence, rights abilities are also considered to be the qualification to assume all legal rights and obligations. In Hofield's theory, "rights and obligations" are obviously an overly general statement. His theory can help us illustrate the exquisite differences and logical relationships between different rights and obligations. In this article, I narrowly define the capacity for rights as the qualification to assume the two most typical rights of Hofield’s right to claim rights and freedom. Since the right to claim and the right to freedom come from the primary rules that directly regulate people's actions rather than the secondary rules that stipulate power, the ability to right is the qualification to assume the primary rights.

When discussing the ability to entitle, the question that needs to be asked is what conceptual restrictions exist for giving a certain subject the qualification to assume the first right. Under normal circumstances (not logical necessity), the minimum rights enjoyed by legal subjects (such as physical integrity rights, personal freedom, etc.) are primary rights, and the conceptual limitation on the ability of rights actually concerns whether an entity has the potential to obtain minimum rights. Therefore, the capacity for rights lies at a core position in the concept of legal subjects.

1. Will issue

What prerequisites do a certain entity need to obtain the primary rights? This is of course related to the nature of the right to claim rights and freedom. Therefore, disputes about the theory of interests and wills of the nature of rights will enter our vision. According to the will theory of rights, will is necessary for rights. Rights are respect and protection for the free choice of rights holders. "Having rights" is similar to "holding a small or small-scale sovereignty", within which rights holders can exercise or waive their rights. If rights are protection of the will of the right holder, and the right to claim rights and freedom are rights, it seems inevitable that the potential entitor of the first right must have will. Therefore, the will theory of rights sets the necessary condition for the right subject to "having will".

Can the theory of rights and will limit the scope of legal subjects based on will be successful? As a paper with the concept of legal subject as its main content, of course it is impossible to enter the long-lasting theoretical dispute between will theory and interest theory. It is proved by completely defeating will theory that because rights are not based on will, the ability to power does not need to be based on will. In distinguishing between different types of rights, I just want to explain here that even if will is a necessary condition for secondary rights (which will be discussed below), it is not necessary for primary rights such as claiming rights and freedom rights.

First look at the right to freedom, the right to freedom means the right to act freely within a certain scope. Initially, "Free Action" implies respect for the free will choice of the right holder. If I have the right to smoke at home, then that right is respect for my choice of smoking at home. But it should be noted that according to the correlation between freedom and the right to no claim defined by Hofield, the focus for realizing this right to freedom is that others have no right to interfere in my actions - others do not have the claim to stop smoking, and my right to freedom has been realized. As for whether smoking is the result of my free will, it will not affect the realization of the right to freedom at all. Further, Hofield himself used "no obligation" to explain the nature of the right to freedom, and "no obligation" obviously does not need to be based on will.

By the same token, the subject that claims power does not need to be based on will as a necessary condition. Asserting rights means that the right subject has the right to enable the obligor to perform certain activities. For example, the owner of the house has the right not to allow the relevant person who is trying to enter his or her house to enter his or her house, or to leave the person who is already entering his or her house. The core difference between claiming rights and freedom can be expressed as the difference between positive rights and negative rights. The former can interfere with or restrict the actions originally planned by the obligor, such as intending to enter the house or not leaving the house. The obligor must realize the rights of the claimant in a way that changes his or her action plan or acts positively; the right to freedom means that the obligor has no right to interfere or must allow the free action of the free right holder. In this sense, the difference between the right to claim and the right to freedom lies only in the difference in relevant obligations. The law can fully realize the right to freedom and the content of the right to claim by restricting the behavior of the obligor. Whether the subject of the right to freedom or claiming rights is willing to engage in specific activities involved in rights, subjectively whether the person who is willing to do not interfere with himself, or the object of the right to claim rights must act in a certain way, will not affect the realization of these rights.

Machi Tianjin Business University Law School Associate Professor

1. Theoretical differences in the concept of legal subject

(I) Legalism and Realism

(II) The qualification theory of rights and obligations and non-simple qualification theory

(III) Holism and Clusterism

2. Internal realism based on different types of rights and obligations

(I) Capacity of rights

1. Will issue

critics may question that if the right subject subject subject subject subject subject subject subject allows it to be violated, the right at this time seems to be considered not violated. Isn’t this just a proverb that the specific subjective state of the right subject (willing to exclude infringement from others) is a necessary condition for the subject to control the right? For example, my house ownership can prevent the obligor from entering my house, but if I invite a friend to visit here, my friend will not infringe on my rights. Therefore, the right to claim to prevent the obligor from entering my house must include the subjective state of "I do not want the obligor to enter my house". However, such criticism actually confuses Hofield's right to claim with the influence of the subject on the relevant obligations expressed through a certain will. If an intruder enters my house without being present or not expressing his explicit dissatisfaction with the obligor to enter my house, he has certainly violated my claim on the house, and at this time, he is obliged to leave regardless of whether I ask him to leave or not. If I make it clear that he doesn't have to leave, it's just because I exempted the person from entering my house based on the right to dispose of the house, but this right to dispose of the right to claim is not the same type. Just as in the ownership of movable property, the owner contains a right to abandon the movable property, which is obviously different from the claim to prevent others from using the movable property. The former relies on expression of will and belongs to the category of power in the Hofield sense. In other words, whether it is the right to freedom or the right to claim, it can be completely reduced to the relevant obligations of the counterparty of the right. Even if such obligations are required to the obligor (see the analysis of the ability to obligations in the following text), they will not require the right holder.

The stubborn willist may continue to argue that any right contains the content of the right holder disposing of the right (especially giving up the right). Without the will, the right will naturally be unable to be disposed of. In this regard, a complete legal right and a simple Hofield element should be distinguished. The simple Hofield element is not necessarily equivalent to a complete legal right. Taking ownership as an example, as a complete legal right, ownership is a mixture of various Hofield elements, including the right to freedom or claim, and also the right to waive ownership (right to dispose of). At this time, claiming ownership is a protection of the will of the right holder, which of course can be established. However, even if the unwilling person cannot enjoy the right to dispose of, he will not be unable to enjoy the first-class rights. It is nothing more than that it can only enjoy "rights fragments" such as the right to freedom and the right to claim. There is a clear difference between enjoying the fragments of rights and not having any rights - based on cluster theory, such subjects have at least a certain degree of legal subject qualifications.

In this way, the ability to constitute the core elements of the legal subject and the minimum rights that are usually stipulated by the actual law will no longer be necessary for having will. Since only biological humans have the will, the traditional view that legal subject can only be biological humans will be greatly improved. In fact, modern legal systems usually recognize that young children, mentally abnormal people, etc. do not have the qualifications to enjoy minimum rights or even other primary rights if they are not in good will. In this case, as long as you believe that the real law at this time has not made a category mistake, it can be admitted that fetuses, animals and natural environments that also lack will will not lose the opportunity to obtain legal subject qualifications. It can be imagined that if animals can enjoy the right to freedom and claim rights, they can delineate protected areas for wild animals to avoid disturbances from humans (right to freedom), or give animals the right to be fed or taken care of (right to claim rights). None of these rights is conceptually obstacles and may not be impossible in fact.

2. Respect for your own reasons

Does the above argument mean that there is no conceptual limitation in any sense of the ability to obtain rights? Some people may think that since I refuse to regard consciousness as a necessary condition for the subject of rights, I must accept the view of interests and regard interests as an inevitable condition for rights, thereby elucidating the possible limitations of the position of interests and the ability of rights.If the theory of interest has become a general theory of alternative will, this idea is certainly feasible; but if this is not the case, my discussion will still be subject to the final conclusion of the will-interest dispute. However, as a paper dedicated to legal subjects, this kind of waiting is actually unnecessary. Regardless of the difference between the theory of interests and will, their consensus is sufficient to give preliminary limitations to the concept of power. This consensus can be called "respect based on one's own reasons." Rights are the protection and respect of the right subject. What the theory of will and the theory of interests argues is whether this respect ultimately points to the will of the subject or the interests of the subject in essence. But in any case, the will and interests here are directly related to the subject itself. The respect for will or interests by rights is not necessary to achieve other purposes other than the subject. This is a consensus between the theory of interests and will. Therefore, I argue that the capacity for rights will still be limited by the concept of rights, but this limitation is not that the person who possesses the capacity must have the will, but that it must be respected by the law on its own grounds. This conclusion also further confirms and embodies the idea that the subjects in the preceding text must obtain the minimum respect of the law (expressed as minimum rights).

In fact, if we can temporarily deviate from the somewhat trivial discussion of contemporary analytical jurisprudence, it will be easier to notice that being respected by the law based on our own reasons is a prerequisite that power and even the entire concept of legal subject must be accepted. Under the influence of Kant's philosophy of viewing man as a purpose, modern legal theory believes that only humans are worthy of the legal subject, and the fundamental reason is that they believe that only humans themselves are the ultimate goal of all human activities (including legal activities). In the historical environment at that time, the goal of this trend of thought was to establish a certain human egalitarianism: since all human beings share a certain characteristic (in Kant's reason), they should be regarded as purpose indiscriminately, and in principle, the legal theory that advocates the ability to grant all human rights is natural.

cannot be considered that "respect based on one's own reasons" is an easy condition to achieve, which will lead to an infinite generalization of the subject of power capacity. In fact, after the law in modern times has given all biological humans the capacity to have the rights, few other entities have been able to obtain the respect of the law on its own reasons without dispute. For example, although the actual legal obligation to prohibit the hunting and killing of wild animals is very common, it will not immediately make wild animals the legal subject. Whether wild animals belong to legal subjects depends on whether the law respects them based on themselves or on better respect or protection of human beings (such as some ecological balance that is beneficial to human beings). Therefore, for animal protectionists who claim to grant the right ability and minimum rights to wild animals, there is a difficulty here in proving that wild animals should be respected by law on their own grounds - this is a difficulty that must be overcome for any advocate that the law should accept certain emerging entities.

Not only that, "respect based on one's own reasons" will exclude many seemingly powerful subject competitors from their qualities for entitlement. Outside the fetus, animals and natural environments, some artificial creatures with obvious tool attributes should be difficult to have the power, such as buildings and machines - their purpose is to serve humans only. Under the current circumstances, even if the machine has the so-called artificial intelligence, it cannot escape the positioning of artificial tools. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that the law has independent reasons to respect machines with artificial intelligence beyond the functions it has implemented. Of course, this does not mean that any object created by humans cannot be regarded as a subject. If a certain type of artificial creature is sufficient for some reason to obtain respect from the law on its own grounds (such as a work of art or a highly intelligent robot that is regarded as a human partner), it is still possible (and only possible, not necessarily). In the later special discussion on the legal subjects of artificial intelligence, I will return to this point of view.

(II) Capacity of behavior

Capacity of behavior is not the ability to act, nor is it the qualification to exercise rights, but the qualification to assume power. Another general legal concept related to power is legal behavior. Legal behavior is an act of executing power. In this sense, capacity for behavior can also be understood as qualifications to engage in legal behavior. As rights stipulated by the second norm, there is a significant difference between power and the right to freedom or claim rights stipulated by the first norm. Power does not involve physical movement or change of the subject, nor directly regulates actions of relative obligations, but helps the right holder to change his existing legal position - whether it is his own status or the legal status of others. For example, in modern private law, biological persons who meet certain age requirements and mental states have the right to form a bond with others. The right involved here is power, that is, the natural person can enter into the normative state of the contract through the bond. Power also exists in the field of public law. Administrative organs have the right to make administrative penalty letters so that administrative counterparts can enter the normative state of administrative responsibility.

The exercise of power will change the legal status. This change reflects the expectation or intention of the power subject. Without this intention, the power subject cannot change the legal status through legal actions. Not only that, the legal state is a state in the normative sense rather than an existence in the physical sense. The power subject does not change the physical world through the power in the physical sense, but needs to imagine a certain legal state. The power stipulated by the law will help it realize this idea - changing the legal status through will. In this case, it is conceptually inevitable to require the bearer of power to have a certain will. Taking into account the above characteristics of the concept of power, the will required by the ability to act should be precisely "wish", and its content should be "I want a certain legal state to occur." Modern philosophy of mind usually uses intentionality to illustrate "will". Simply put, intentionality refers to the fact that psychology can point to, involve, and about things in the world in various ways. As a basic intentional type, what makes the will different from belief is that it has the applicable direction of the world to the mind. This is not a place to discuss this philosophical issue specifically. It is enough to point out one thing: as a certain psychological activity (but not all psychological activities are intentional activities), intention should be based on certain biological conditions. If an entity lacks intentionality that can point to things and the adaptive direction of the world to the mind, it may be difficult to be considered to be able to independently generate the state of consciousness such as "will". The natural environment, plants and current artificial intelligence mentioned in this article should not meet this condition, and young children and animals may have simple or primary intentions.

Therefore, the view on the capacity for behavior in this article is consistent with the conclusions of modern civil law. Will (here is mainly willing) should still be regarded as a necessary condition to capacity for behavior. Those who have no intention shall not have the capacity for behavior and are not qualified to enjoy the power to change the legal status. But will is not a sufficient condition for the capacity for behavior, and not all willing people have the capacity for behavior. Such as young children, severe mental illness or animals. It is difficult to determine from a psychological sense that the above subjects are completely unwilling, but the content of these willingness may be technically difficult to accurately determine (such as severe mental illness or animals), or are not taken seriously based on some substantial value or moral stance (such as a young child may indeed be willing to exchange 1,000 yuan for a candy). Based on these considerations, the law may still refuse to grant capacity to certain willing entities.

(III) Obligation Capability

In Hofield's system, obligations only refer to the legal status related to the claim right, that is, to respect the claim right, the law's requirement for the implementation or failure of the relevant entity to perform or not perform specific actions is usually expressed as "not" doing something or "should" doing something. As a primary obligation, the so-called "something" does not have the function of changing the legal status, but only points to the physical movement or change of the subject.The key here is still that is whether movement or change is based on the will of the mover? Can a certain human physiological change, animal activities, and even natural phenomena based on the law of cause and effect, be regarded as observing or violating obligations?

Initially, there seems to be no big problem with observing the obligation. If my cat does not step out of the activity space I designated for it, it seems reasonable to say that the cat has complied with a certain obligation. Violation of obligations is different. In terms of the concept of obligations, illegal acts that violate obligations are either intentional or negligent. It is unnatural to think that the obligation is violated without intention or negligence. The reason comes from a theory that is traditional but difficult to completely subvert: free will is the premise for the subject to assume obligations, and it is appropriate to assume obligations only when the subject can choose to comply with or violate obligations. If a fact seems to violate the requirement of an obligation, if this so-called violation of the lack of the possibility of choice, which is determined by the law of cause and effect, it cannot be considered that the subject associated with the event has violated the obligation at this time - because it lacks the possibility of not violating the obligation. If it can be considered that "should contain ability" is a conceptual proposition, then the obligation capacity cannot be entrusted to those who lack will, and will should be regarded as a necessary condition for the obligation capacity. In other words, if the law requires a certain type of wild animal to be active in a specific area, the legislator should be considered stupid (not necessarily evil) in the case of a lack of will of the animal because he made a category mistake at this time. Of course, there is a clear difference in the will required by the ability to obligate and the will required by the ability to act. According to the previous statement, the will required for the capacity to act is the willingness to expect a certain legal state to occur. The will required by obligation ability is mainly to choose or control the subjective state of performing a specific behavior. That is, after adding the subjective state of free will, the relevant behavior is no longer considered as a result that will inevitably occur under the action of the objective law of cause and effect, but comes from the intentional choice of the actor.

(IV) Other abilities

The remaining Hofield elements now have no right to claim, submission, immunity and no power. In theory, of course, it is possible to conceive of no claim, ability to surrender, immunity and powerlessness. These abilities conceptually do not limit the scope of legal subjects, and rarely enter the perspective of legal knowledge. Therefore, there is no focus analysis, but briefly explain it as follows:

has no rights (no right to claim, no power), that is, there is no state of claiming rights or power. It is difficult to imagine conceptually that a state of not enjoying a certain right places some restrictions or demands on its bearer.

ability to succumb. In Hofield's theory, the legal status that is related to power, can be changed by the exercise of power is to submit. What conditions does an entity have to bear the responsibility for submission? If it can be determined that the specific rights and obligations undertaken by the legal subject all come from the conscious setting of the authority of the law, and this conscious setting is also the exercise of power, the ability to surrender should be considered as the most basic element of subject qualification. In this sense, the concept of ability to succumb to legal subject qualifications is synonymous. Therefore, if you ask what restrictions are raised by the person who submits to the subject, you are actually asking what restrictions are raised by the right subject on the right subject, which will return to the starting point of the problem. To take a step back, even if the ability to surrender is not understood in this universal sense, the concept of surrender has no limit on ability to surrender. At this time, it should be distinguished between the submission as the possibility of assumed rights and obligations and the rights and obligations brought to the submission. The latter will of course limit what can be assumed for these specific rights and obligations, and the former is only the preliminary possibility of being changed. The possibility of being changed itself does not affect which one can be changed and what it will have such an impact.

exemption is a state where legal status is not changed.This is divided into two situations. One is that an entity that does not have any legal qualifications at all, and of course it cannot be changed by legal power. Discussing the qualification of such immunity is actually a discussion of what is the necessary condition for treating X as a non-legal subject, which will still return to the starting point of the problem. Another situation is that if X has already assumed certain rights and obligations, it is now necessary to discuss what his qualifications to assume immunity. Just as “can be changed by power” itself does not conceptually limit the qualification for submission, nor does “can be changed by power” itself conceptually limit the qualification for immunity—if there is any limitation, this restriction will also come from the specific rights and obligations enjoyed by the subject that cannot be changed.

Therefore, after the legal subject qualifications are mainly broken down into power, capacity for action, and capacity for obligations according to the Hofield elements, an internal realism based on the Hofield theory or type of rights and obligations was therefore established. Among them, whether one has the will and whether one has independent reasons for respect by the law will create conceptual constraints on whether an entity enjoys a specific type of legal subject qualification.

There is another question that needs to be clarified here: if a certain X has all types of subject qualifications, it will certainly belong to the legal subject, such as adults without mental defects. But if you only have the qualifications of some subjects, can you be called a legal subject? From the perspective of cluster theory, the answer is naturally yes. Here we need to emphasize the particularity of power capacity in the composition of subject qualifications. Due to the existence of the necessary condition of minimum rights defined in the previous article, the ability to right should be the minimum subject qualification. If the ability to right, the minimum rights will usually not be enjoyed, and therefore will not be subject to the minimum respect of the law, and of course it cannot be regarded as the subject. This view is in line with some intuitive understanding and also echoes the example mentioned above: although young children do not have the ability to behave and obligate, they are often considered to have the qualifications of legal subjects, and slaves who only have obligate capacity are not legal subjects. Therefore, even if the legal subject qualifications can be broken down into several types, the status of the power of power is more special. The so-called part of the subject qualifications still require the power of power as a necessary condition. In this sense, the limitations on the concept of legal subjects in the capacity for power should be more basic.

3. The legal subject issues of the fiction subject and artificial intelligence

Finally, let’s briefly explain the working principle of the fiction subject and its inspiration for answering the qualifications of the legal subject of artificial intelligence. In modern law, corporations are typical of such subjects. If gods, dead, etc. do not really exist, they can be roughly included in the fictional subject. As a collection of people, legal persons do not have independent reasons for being respected by the law (relative to their members), nor have the will, but are considered to have almost complete legal subject qualifications. Isn’t this already explaining that all discussions on the concept of legal subjects in this article are unnecessary?

In my opinion, comparing legal persons with biological humans, animals, and natural environments is a category mistake in itself. The latter is an entity, while the former is just a statement made by law by conveniently calling a gathering of people in the legal sense and is not a real existence. When we argue that animals should become legal subjects, we are claiming that certain living animals have to bear certain rights and obligations. In the case of legal persons, it is necessary to distinguish between biological people groups that can exist independently without relying on the law and so-called imitation subjects that rely on legal fiction or constitutive legal rules and are called "legal persons". The fictional subject is not a real existence. The real existence and enjoys rights and obligations is the biological group behind the legal person. In this sense, legal persons only include a lot of rights and obligations of many biological people behind them. When a legal person is enacted by the law, the law does not add another real bearer of rights and obligations beyond biological humans. The legal person itself has no rights and obligations in the end.The view of legal persons as the subject is largely due to the economic cognitive value of expression and thinking, and does not really make this illusory statement bear any rights and obligations. The subject issues of gods and the dead are generally equivalent to this: they do not exist at all in fact and are completely impossible to enjoy subjective qualifications. In the legal saying of treating the gods or the dead as the subject of the law, the ultimate rights and obligations also need to be borne by biological people, such as clergy, heirs of the deceased. Within the scope of the fictional subject, the concept of legal subject constructed in this article certainly cannot have a substantial impact on "who can become the legal subject". Things like gods and dead may become legal subjects, and it is not surprising that a fictional subject such as a legal person does not conform to the concept of legal subject constructed in this article. It can be seen from this that the legal subject being made is not the legal subject defined in this article at all. The existence of the fictional subject in legal theory and legal practice will not have a substantial impact on the position of this article.

There may be civil law scholars who specialize in the theory of civil subjects pointing out that my above views randomly choose the so-called "legal person fiction theory" and do not fully respect the so-called "legal person truth theory" that is still influential. This is obviously not a place to fully review this famous debate. Briefly, I think the main reason for supporting the legal person is the independence between the legal person and its members. This independence is mainly manifested in the fact that for example, the change of the legal person member will not affect the existence of the legal person, the member of the legal person can be a person other than the legal person, the property rights of the legal person and the property rights of the members are separated from each other (the independence of the responsible property), the behavior of the legal person is different from the behavior of the relevant biological person, and even the independence of the legal person (society) relative to the individual in social life, etc. I certainly will not deny these well-known independences, but these independences will not affect the above-mentioned view that legal persons are fictional subjects that are different from biological humans. In fact, my point of view only depends on this: the rights and obligations of legal persons, in a semantic sense (neither related to the expression of the legal provisions themselves, nor the institutional functions or social roles of the legal person) must be fully "translated" as the rights and obligations of biological persons, even if the process of this translation is extremely complex and lengthy. In other words, as long as it is possible to affirm that in the existence of a legal person, the rights and obligations of the legal person are expressed as the rights and obligations of the relevant biological person (regardless of whether they are members of the legal person) without losing semantics, there is no more mysterious rights and obligations that cannot be transliterated, and there is no remaining rights and obligations of the legal person that cannot be compared with the subject qualifications of the natural person. After all, the statement that the rights and obligations of the legal person are still the rights and obligations of the biological person can be verified.

Of course, the process of translating the rights and obligations of a legal person to the rights and obligations of a related biological person is almost necessarily complex and lengthy. This happens to be the primary reason why the modern legal system usually emulates a legal person as a legal subject (rather than always stipulates the rights and obligations of a related biological person): Based on the consideration of the economics of thinking or the convenience of expression, it is sometimes necessary to "fiction" the fictional subject that does not exist at the ontological level, and make it "bearable" certain rights and obligations in legal thinking, and only when necessary (such as liquidation of a legal person) let the legal person subject release the rights and obligations relationship between the relevant biological persons.

distinguishes the composition of special subjects such as the falsified subject from the concept of legal subjects that is focused on constructing in this article, which will definitely inspire the debate on the qualifications of legal subjects in artificial intelligence. As mentioned above, according to the analysis framework of this article, if it is impossible to deny that artificial intelligence or machines with artificial intelligence are tools invented by humans to serve humans, then before this concept is eliminated, artificial intelligence will not be able to obtain independent reasons for being respected by law; and if humans think about the slow attitude of human beings to respect animals, you can know that even if artificial intelligence technology itself develops rapidly, it will be difficult for humans to quickly transform "independent respect" to a certain degree of "respecting" artificial intelligence.Therefore, if artificial intelligence wants to become a new subject candidate as competitive as the fetus, animals, and the natural environment, it may be very difficult in theory, let alone surpass these candidates in one fell swoop and directly obtain subject qualifications. However, inspired by the fictional subject, it cannot be ruled out that artificial intelligence can become a fictional subject like a legal person, not as an entity but as a certain statement, and bear certain rights and obligations that ultimately point to biological humans in legal thinking.

Here we can give several examples that are often mentioned in the legal subject issues of artificial intelligence: (1) As the obligation and responsible person in infringement cases, for example, it is determined that an autonomous vehicle is obliged to avoid collisions during driving and bear tort liability in cases where collisions occur. However, just as the legal person cannot truly assume legal obligations, the relevant biological persons are still the ones who truly assume the duty of care and tort liability for artificial intelligence. In acknowledging that artificial intelligence lacks will, it is undoubtedly stupid to insist that artificial intelligence violates its obligations and should bear legal responsibility. (2) Enjoy the capacity to act and act as an agent of other qualified legal subjects in conjunction with or perform other legal acts. Artificial intelligence has no will, and the law can only "consider" some external manifestations caused by artificial intelligence algorithms as expressions of their will. More importantly, the so-called expression of will of artificial intelligence as an agent is actually just the technical exercise of the principal's power. The artificial intelligence agent is a tool for the principal to realize his intentions. The rights and obligations relationship between the principal-artificial intelligence agent-third party should ultimately be restored to the rights and obligations relationship between the principal and the third party. (3) As the copyright owner, artificial intelligence enjoys copyright to the works it creates through algorithms, and others may not use them without permission. Even if the creation of artificial intelligence is regarded as a copyright-enjoying work protected by law, what the law should respect is not artificial intelligence itself, but biological humans related to artificial intelligence. This is somewhat similar to the property rights of legal persons. The protection of legal persons' property by law will ultimately point to shareholders or other stakeholders behind society. In the above example, there are indeed no obstacles to making artificial intelligence a "legal subject". Creating such legal subjects will undoubtedly make our legal expression and thinking easier in many cases, simplifying the language expression of the legal system and legal reasoning in case-based processing. Therefore, with the continuous technological progress in the field of artificial intelligence and changes in human lifestyles, we may have good reasons to imitate artificial intelligence as a subject like a legal person. However, according to this method, the ultimate bearer of rights and obligations is probably still a biological person.

Conclusion

This article is a basic research on the concept of legal subjects, focusing on a relatively abstract theoretical level, and initially answering the general question of "what can become a legal subject". The reason why it is said to be preliminary is that it is just an attempt to specify the minimum necessary conditions to meet to become a legal subject. In order to make the candidate subject eventually become a legal subject, it is also necessary to conduct special arguments in addition to the necessary conditions provided in this article based on the specific situation of the specific candidate subject. However, the positioning of "preliminary research" does not mean that the views in this article are too thin and thus lose their due inspiration. On the basic position of the so-called internal realism-not simple qualification theory-cluster theory, the article has developed a set of legal subject concept theory based on the types of rights and obligations, which roughly divides legal subject qualifications into three categories: power, ability to act, and ability to obligate. Among them, the qualification for the ability to entitle is not based on the possession of will, but must be based on the independent respect of the law; the ability to act and obligations must be based on the possession of will (will or free will). I believe that these conclusions not only confirm the basic content of the concept of legal subjects in the sense of legal theory, but also inspire and help people to think about the legal status of emerging subjects such as fetuses, animals, natural environment, and artificial intelligence in a unique way.

If the theory of interest has become a general theory of alternative will, this idea is certainly feasible; but if this is not the case, my discussion will still be subject to the final conclusion of the will-interest dispute. However, as a paper dedicated to legal subjects, this kind of waiting is actually unnecessary. Regardless of the difference between the theory of interests and will, their consensus is sufficient to give preliminary limitations to the concept of power. This consensus can be called "respect based on one's own reasons." Rights are the protection and respect of the right subject. What the theory of will and the theory of interests argues is whether this respect ultimately points to the will of the subject or the interests of the subject in essence. But in any case, the will and interests here are directly related to the subject itself. The respect for will or interests by rights is not necessary to achieve other purposes other than the subject. This is a consensus between the theory of interests and will. Therefore, I argue that the capacity for rights will still be limited by the concept of rights, but this limitation is not that the person who possesses the capacity must have the will, but that it must be respected by the law on its own grounds. This conclusion also further confirms and embodies the idea that the subjects in the preceding text must obtain the minimum respect of the law (expressed as minimum rights).

(II) Capacity of behavior

(III) Obligation Capability

(IV) Other abilities

3. The legal subject issues of the fiction subject and artificial intelligence

Conclusion