4) Legal Entities

Learning outcomes:
- Students define the concept of a legal entity and distinguish it from a natural person.
- Students interpret the evolution of terminology of legal entity.
- Students analyse the origins of legal entities in Roman law and assess their transformation through medieval and during industrialization and beyond.
- Students compare and critically assess major theoretical approaches to the nature of legal entities (the Theory of Fiction and the Theory of Reality).
- Students classify legal entities under Czech law and differentiate between entities governed by private law and those governed by public law.
- Students explain the scope of legal personality of legal entities, identify exceptions to general legal capacity under Czech law and compare with the Ultra Vires Doctrine.
- Students analyse the doctrinal debate on whether legal entities possess legal capacity and articulate arguments for both positions.
- Students identify and describe the main types of legal entities under Czech law and their fundamental characteristics.

Relevant provisions of Czech Civil Code: 
Sects. 15-435

Case law: 
USA: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad: 118 U.S. 394 (1886)
AT: OGH Case No 5 Ob 10/03m

Sources: 
Frinta, O. Private Law in the Czech Republic – Development, Presence and Prospects, In Moon, J.; Tomášek, M. et al. Law Crossing Eurasia. From Korea to the Czech Republic. Passau-Berlin-Prague: rw&w, 2015, pp. 63-89.