CAVALIDA, ERVIN MICHAEL B.

EH309 LLB-1

Legal Fiction

A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts which is then used in order to
apply a legal rule. Typically, a legal fiction allows the court to ignore a fact that
would prevent it from exercising its jurisdiction by simply assuming that the fact is
different. This is the case with the Bill of Middlesex where the Court of King's Bench
could only exercise jurisdiction over cases which took place in the historic English
county of Middlesex. To allow the Court, which was the central court of the land, to
take jurisdiction over other cases, parties began to plead that, along with the other
facts, there had also been a trespass which occurred in Middlesex. This allowed the
King's Bench to rule on the whole of the case.

Legal fiction, a rule assuming as true something that is clearly false. A fiction is often
used to get around the provisions of constitutions and legal codes that legislators
are hesitant to change or to encumber with specific limitations. Thus, when a
legislature has no legal power to sit beyond a certain midnight but has five hours
more of work still to do, it is easier to turn back the official clock from time to time
than it is to change the law or constitution.

Legal Fiction vs. Presumption

Legal fictions are different from legal presumptions which assume a certain state of
facts until the opposite is proved, such as the presumption of legitimacy. A legal
fiction, by contrast, can be seen in laws recognizing "virgin birth", i.e. that a child
born to an unmarried mother has no genetic, biological or psychological father. They
are different from hypothetical examples, such as the 'reasonable person' which
serve as tools for the court to express its reasoning. They are also different from
legal principles which create a legal state of affairs that is different from the
underlying facts, such as corporate personhood although these are sometimes
wrongly called legal fictions.

Legal Fiction vs. Rules of Statutory Construction

Rules of statutory construction is the process by which courts interpret and apply
legislation. Some amount of interpretation is often necessary when a case involves a
statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and straightforward meaning.
But in many cases, there is some ambiguity or vagueness in the words of the statute
that must be resolved by the judge. To find the meanings of statutes, judges use
various tools and methods of statutory interpretation, including traditional canons
of statutory interpretation, legislative history, and purpose. In common law
jurisdictions, the judiciary may apply rules of statutory interpretation both to
legislation enacted by the legislature and to delegated legislation such as
administrative agency regulations. On the other hand, A legal fiction is a proposition
about the substance or procedure of the legal system, purporting to be a principle or
rule material to the determination of cases, which rests in whole or in part on
factual premises known to be inaccurate at the time of the fiction's invocation. Each
fiction, qua fiction, may be said to have a subject matter, comprised of the premise
or premises counterfactually maintained. Fictions may have as their subject matter
the parties' status or prior transactions in the case before the court; or the existence
or relationship of third parties, places, or things not before the court; or they may
assert facts about the tribunal, or about the history of the law itself.

Examples of Legal Fiction

Adoption
One example of a legal fiction occurs in adoption. Once an order or judgment of
adoption (or similar decree from a court) is entered, one or both biological (or
natural) parents becomes a legal stranger to the child, legally no longer related to
the child and with no rights related to him or her. Conversely, the adoptive parents
are legally considered to be the parents of the adopted child; a new birth certificate
reflecting this is issued. The new birth certificate is a legal fiction.

Corporate personhood

The concept of the law treating corporate entities as if they were persons dates back
to Ancient Rome. This simple fiction enabled corporations to acquire wealth,
expand, and become the preferred organizational form for businesses of all sizes.
Corporate personhood has come under criticism recently, as courts have extended
other rights to the corporation beyond those necessary to ensure their liability for
debts. Other commentators argue that corporate personhood is not a fiction
anymore; it simply means that for some legal purposes, "person" has now a wider
meaning than it had before and it still has in non-legal uses. In jurisdictions using
this fiction, a legal drafter may distinguish between a "person" and a "natural
person" to specify the scope of legislation.

Doctrine of survival

The doctrine of survival is also an example of legal fiction. If two people die at the
same time or in a manner that renders it impossible to tell who had died first, the
older of the two is considered to have died first, subject to rebuttal by evidence
demonstrating the actual order of death.[7] In the United States, many jurisdictions
have abolished the doctrine of survival by statute; see Uniform Simultaneous Death
Act.

Ejectment

A similar albeit more complicated legal fiction involved pleadings in the common
law action of ejectment by which title to real property was tried. The common law
had a procedure whereby title to land could be put in direct issue, called the "writ of
right". One inconvenience of this procedure, though, was that the defendant at his
option could insist on trial by "wager of battle", that is trial by combat, a judicially
sanctioned duel. Most plaintiffs were unwilling to stake life and limb on the hazard
of the battle, so the procedure fell into disuse. Rather, an elaborate tale was told in
the pleadings, about how one John Doe leased land from the plaintiff, but was ousted
by Richard Roe, who claimed a contrary lease from the defendant. These events, if
true, led to the "assize of novel disseisin", later called the "mixed action in
ejectment", a procedure in which title could ultimately be determined, but which led
instead to trial by jury. This is the origin of the names John Doe, Richard Roe, and so
forth, for anonymous parties. The fiction of Doe, Roe, and the leases was not
challenged by the parties unless they wished to stake their life and safety on a trial
by combat. Wager of battle was in fact not abolished in England until 1819, though it
fell into disuse by the end of the thirteenth century.

Resignation from Parliament

Another legal fiction involves resignation from Parliament in the United Kingdom. In
1623 a rule was declared that said that Members of Parliament were given a trust to
represent their constituencies, and therefore were not at liberty to resign them. In
those days, Parliament was relatively weak in comparison to the 21st century, and
service was sometimes considered a resented duty rather than a position of power
and honour. However, an MP who accepted an "office of profit" from the Crown
(including appointment as a minister) was obliged to leave the House and seek re-
election, it being feared that his independence was compromised if he were in the
King's pay. Therefore, the device was invented that the MP who wished to quit
applied to the King for the post of "Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds" or "Steward of
the Manor of Northstead" with no duties or income, but legally an office of profit in
the King's gift nonetheless. The first MP to avail himself of the Chiltern Hundreds to
leave Parliament was John Pitt in 1751. The requirement for ministerial re-election
has been abolished, but the "Chiltern Hundreds" mechanism has been retained to
enable MPs to resign.