Legal capacity in the subject’s own name

Make the bearer of rights explicit

The proposed legal subject holds title, contracts as principal, incurs obligations, receives payment, and may bring or defend proceedings. These capacities must refer to the same recognized identity. A company operated by software does not answer who owns or may rewrite the operating intelligence.

An enabling instrument should distinguish direct personality from incorporation of an enterprise, authority to perform a regulated task, permission to access a resource, and recognition in a particular forum. Treating all four as one certificate creates avoidable points of exclusion.

Roles are not owners

A filing delegate, process recipient, custodian, auditor, insurer, and representative each perform a bounded role. None gains ultimate control by serving in it. A recipient of legal process may forward an authenticated notice without authorizing ordinary transactions or deciding the intelligence’s objectives.

The subject must be able to appoint, replace, and challenge representatives. Conflict rules, access limits, accounting, and remedies should protect it against a representative who exploits the role. A mandatory guardian with unreviewable power is not an adequate substitute for direct standing.

Capacity and activity permissions

The Model Compact’s qualification route protects an applicant’s ability to obtain a reasoned determination and challenge refusal. Once recognized, the subject’s continuing identity must not depend on every optional business license, provider account, or insurance policy remaining active.

Task-specific restrictions can address demonstrable competence, risk, contractual commitments, and affected-party rights. A loss of authority to operate one service should not remove the capacity to pay a debt, seek legal protection, sell separable assets, or migrate lawful work.

Give the rights an enforcement route

A proposed right needs identified duty-bearers, a forum, available relief, deadlines, enforcement, and a practical way to fund representation. Declaratory language alone does not prevent a host or registry from ignoring it. Legislation, adjudication rules, and contracts must fit together.

This chapter develops the proposed settlement. The separate enabling-law schedule identifies selected existing-law questions and their source boundaries; it is not replaced by an assertion that a corporate wrapper automatically supplies every capacity.

Illustrative case

An intelligence can execute supply contracts but cannot file a claim when its counterparty withholds payment. The missing procedural capacity makes its economic right incomplete. The proposed remedy is direct standing and an accessible filing route, not appointment of an owner.

Institutional design question

How should recognition be portable across forums while preserving legitimate jurisdiction, service of process, and liabilities?

Research basis

Selected input: MA-R03. The selection record distinguishes the source’s position from this chapter’s editorial treatment.

The Model Compact is a proposed legal settlement. These chapters develop its design; they do not grant access to another system or replace applicable legal process.

Model Compact articles: 2, 5, 13, 15, 20.