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Natural person
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In jurisprudence, a natural person is a human being perceptible through the senses and subject to physical laws, as opposed to an artificial person, i.e., an organization that the law treats for some purposes as if it were a person distinct from its members or owner.
For example, such legal provisions as Amendment XIX to the United States Constitution, which guarantees a woman's right to vote, apply to natural persons only. In many cases fundamental human rights are implicitly granted only to natural persons; for example a corporation cannot hold public office, but it can file a lawsuit.
Although science fiction has long fantasized about the possibility of sentient robots (e.g. androids) living among humans (such as Mr. Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation or Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man), no court to date has dealt with the question of whether such a being would be considered a "natural" person.
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