The Person at Federal Law: A Framework and a Rico Test Suite

INTRODUCTION Who does this statute address? Usually, the answer at federal law is that the statute addresses things known as "persons." Lawyers typically only go this far when doing statutory analysis. They fail to ask a second, more penetrating, question: What, exactly, is a "person"? The word "person" describes the entities to which the law assigns rights and duties. Theories of culpability connect these entities to legally prescribed behavior, and serve as a restraint on the size of the class of persons that are potentially liable for a violation of law. The forces that shape the meaning of the term "person" place considerable strain upon it. Attempts by the courts and Congress to wrestle with the problems of statutory construction presented by personhood created a body of interpretive rules surrounding the term "person" that fail to provide the necessary certainty and consistency expected from basic legal definitions. This Note aims to describe federal law's use of the term "person" to define those with legal duties and rights, show how the current framework fails to adequately achieve these goals through its application to a typical "personhood" problem, and outline some simple proposals that will give the framework a far greater degree of coherence. Part I describes a theoretical framework for answering personhood questions at federal law. It begins with a general discussion of the concept of the legal person, and of the theories of criminal and civil liability entrenched in federal law that connect legal "persons" to rights and obligations Congress creates by statute. It then describes Congress' attempts to elaborate on these concepts through the Dictionary Act's (1) definition of the term "person" and individual definitions of the term in various statutory provisions. Part II employs a "test suite" (2)--the problem of whether municipalities are subject to civil liability under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (3)--to illustrate the inadequacies of the current framework. Part III uses the descriptive analysis of Part I and the applied analysis of Part II as a springboard for proposing improvements to the current framework for resolving personhood questions at federal law. I. THE TERM "PERSON" AT FEDERAL LAW The person is a fundamental unit of legal analysis. Despite its centrality, personhood is difficult to describe succinctly because it cuts across legal concepts that appear unrelated at first glance. This is especially true in federal law because Congress' approach to defining the term "person" has never been systematic. This Part of the Note will first lay out the framework for understanding legal personhood questions as a general matter, and then discuss the basic protocol courts should follow when dealing with a question of whether or not a particular individual or entity is a person under a federal statute. A. The Concept of Legal Personhood 1. Entities to Which Rights and Duties Are Assigned Few words enshrine as many important values and ideas as the word "person." In common usage, it can be used to refer to one's sense of self; one's role in life; or one's spiritual, psychological, and emotional identity. (4) Personhood is also a seminal idea of the law; "persons" are the "units" to which the law attaches rights and duties. (5) Scholarly opinion on the nature of legal personhood is wide-ranging. (6) Categorizing something as a "person" is not meaningful solely in the abstract. The classification has real significance in terms of how the legal system will interact with a particular entity or group of entities. (7) Popular and legal concepts of personhood intersect insofar as all natural persons are usually legal persons. One convenient way of discerning whether something is a legal person is to ask whether or not it is "treated more or less as a human being" by the law. (8) Occasionally, theorists attempt to merge the popular and legal concepts of personhood by applying "[p]hilosophical and psychological theories of personality" to the problem of legal personhood. …