On The Legal Personality Of Conjoined-Twins And Its Protection

Among the civil subjects, though the number of Conjoined twins is small, they really exist. Regarding the legal personality of conjoined twins, few civil laws take this into consideration and no relevant research is directed to it, either. What's worse, the standard for legislation is still lacking. All of these are disadvantageous to the protection of their personality and rights. Drawing on the essential theories of legal personality system of civil law, the present paper, centering round the basic concept of civil rights, determines the categorization of conjoined twins' personality, capacity for civil conducts and duties. It analyzes the common features of the benefit of conjoined twins' personality and the compromising rules for the conflict of rights. It explores the legal issues concerning the birth and separation of conjoined twins, so as to establish art overall protection rule for the individual personality of conjoined twins and their rights. The foUowings are the main ideas of the present paper: the fundamental elements for determining the legal personality of conjoined twins lie in a separate brain, an independent will, and a definable social role. In other words, the individual of conjoined twins, so long as it possesses a separate brain, reveals an independent will, and assumes a definable social role, should enjoy an independent legal personality. They are the entities who have the capacity for civil rghts but without capacity for civil conducts, or those with the capacity for civil rights but with limited or deficient capacity for civil conducts, and are thereby all in need of amendment of guardianship systems. Because of the conjoined bodies, the conjoined twins usually have common conducts, involve in common events and form an image of unity, which lead to the conflict of rights and the share of the personality benefits. The exercise of their personality benefit should follow "the rule of common domination", "the rule of mutual duties for protecting and caring", "the rule for respecting the reasonable demands of the counterpart", and "the rule of exercising the right for requesting in concert", etc. The compromise of the conflict of the rights should abide by "the rule of optimizing the benefits", "the rule of combination of self-decision and consulting in agreement", "the rule of the combination of rights first and the idea of guardians", and "the rule of the combination of self-responsibility and exemption", etc. The right of separation is a special case for conjoined twins. It ensures the existence of the individuals of the conjoined twins. It is the prerequisite for individual freedom of conjoined twins. The right of separation of conjoined twins shares the legal attributes of common possession, affiliation, and limited domination. The exercise of the fight of separation must abide by "the rule of protecting life", "the rule of justice and legality for sacrificing separation", "the rule of self-decision" and "the rule of final decision by the court", etc.