From Wikipedia: Corporate personhood

An odd twist to our look at civil liberties and rights.

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Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons. In most countries, corporations, as legal persons, have a right to enter into contracts with other parties and to sue or be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons.

India, as early as 800 BC, granted legal personhood to guild-like śreṇī that operated in the public interest. The late Roman Republic granted legal personhood to municipalities, public works companies that managed public services, and voluntary associations (collegia) such as the early Catholic Church. The diverse collegia had different rights and responsibilities that were independent of the individual members. Some collegia resembled later medieval guilds and were allowed to advance the needs of a trade as a whole, but collegia were otherwise barred from enriching their members.

In the Middle Ages, a legal "persona" could facilitate collective perpetual ownership of assets beyond the founders' lifespans, and avoid personal property inheritance laws. Later on, incorporation was advocated as an efficient and secure mode of economic development: advantages over existing partnership structures included the corporation's continuing existence if a member died; the ability to act without unanimity; and limited liability. The word "corporation" itself derives from the Latin corpus ("body"), and corporate personhood is often assumed in medieval writings; by the Renaissance period, European jurists routinely held that churches and universities chartered by the government could gain property, enter into contracts, sue, and be sued, independent of its members. The government (or the Pope) granted religious organizations "the power of perpetual succession": church property would not revert to the local lord, nor be taxed, upon the death of church members.

Some town charters explicitly granted medieval towns the right of self-governance. Commercial endeavors were not among the entities incorporated in the medieval era, and even risky trading companies were originally run as common-law partnerships rather than corporations; the incorporation of the East India Company monopoly in 1600 broke new ground, and by the end of the century, commercial ventures frequently sought incorporation in Europe and the American continent. By the 19th century, the direction of British and American corporate law had diverged; British law of this period (such as the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856) appeared to focus more on corporations that more closely resembled traditional joint ventures, while American law was driven by the need to manage a more diverse corporate landscape.[3]