Status (law)

Legal status is the position held by something or someone with regard to law. It is a set of rights, obligations, powers or restrictions that a person or thing has which are encompassed in or declared by legislation.

In early laws, an outlaw was a person who, by judicial process, was deprived of all normal rights as a human being unless and until a court reversed itself through an affirmative act of inlawry. This was a form of civil death. Similarly, a slave was a chattel or possession, and had no legal personality except that, in the U.S., some of the Free States did allow limited legal personality. Legal personality could be surrendered voluntarily by becoming a monk or by travelling, e.g. the first provisions of the French Civil Code deny civil rights to foreigners. As an aspect of the social contract between a state and the citizens who owe it allegiance, most developed legal systems contain positive provisions defining each individual's legal identity and its attributes. All matters of social rank or caste are examples of personal status, the modern extremes of which would be nobility and the 200 million dalits, the untouchables of India.

Full age or minority are in many laws treated as aspects of personal status. The same thing is true of the loss of capacity by reason of insanity or other mental illness. This is of critical importance if a person wishes to enter into a marriage or a contract having travelled to a state where the age of minority is different or the form of marriage is apparently not consistent with the laws of the "home" state.

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