Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Many of the arguments with which this book has been concerned belong to a past age. We no longer hear much about, or seem much to care, whether churches are or are not persons in their own right. We do still, of course, hear a great deal about the legal status of trade unions, but we do not hear the question of that status addressed in the language of legal personality. In fact, most of the clearcut distinctions on which the concept of legal personality depends have been lost under the welter of legislation that marks this century, all of it necessarily designed with what Maitland would call ‘convenience’ in mind. There have, for example, been many companies acts since the act of 1862, and each one has been concerned with practical issues over and above any abstract ones. As a result, we now have trusts that can incorporate corporations (many charities are now limited companies) and corporations that can incorporate trusts (in the form of pension funds and so on), while the questions of corporate identity and corporate liability, though more pressing than ever, have also become ever more complex. Amidst all this legislation, much has happened to enhance the freedoms enjoyed by groups within the state, and much (notably the trade union reforms of the 1980s) to diminish it.
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