Capacity, LEGAL

Capacity, LEGAL, means the power to alter one's rights or duties by the exercise of free will, or responsibility to punishment for one's acts. Civil capacity depends on Age (q.v.) and mental condition (see INSANITY). But civil incapacity is often imposed as a punishment on persons of full age and undoubted mental capacity. Convicts and persons attainted are placed under a general civil incapacity, and partial incapacities are also imposed as punishments—e.g. where a person is found guilty of bribery he becomes incapable of a certain public office. The English law of infancy, imposing a general disability to contract (except for necessities) on all men up to the age of 21, is not founded on physiological fact, and requires alteration. The disabilities attaching to married women have been largely removed by recent legislation in both England and Scotland. For supposed political reasons aliens were for a long time debarred from ordinary civil rights, and they are still properly excluded from political rights until they naturalise themselves and adopt the obligations of a subject. Different tests of capacity are applied to different transactions, as Contract (q.v.) and testament.