1. The legal status of one regarded by the law as a person; the legal conception by which the law regards a human being or an artificial entity as a person.
— Also termed legal personality.
“Legal personality … refers to the particular device by which the law creates or recognizes units to which it ascribes certain powers and capacities.” George Whitecross Paton, A Textbook of Jurisprudence 393 (G.W. Paton & David P. Derham eds., 4th ed. 1972).
2. Parliamentary law. (usu. pl.) An improper reference to a member by name or in his or her personal capacity.“No person in speaking, is to mention a member then present by his name; but to describe him by his seat in the house, or who spoke last, or on the other side of the question, nor to digress from the matter to fall upon the person, by speaking, reviling, nipping, or unmannerly words against a particular member. The consequences of a measure may be reprobated in strong terms; but to arraign the motives of those who propose or advocate it, is a personality, and against order.” Thomas Jefferson, A Manual of Parliamentary Practice 36–37 (1801) (citations omitted).
