Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp. · ¶26

When examining the relationship between the State and an entity it created, this Court's early cases focused on whether the entity was a separate legal person from the State. One key marker of separate legal personhood was the corporate form. At common law, a “corporation” was “an artificial person, existing in contemplation of law, and endowed with” “certain immunities, privileges, and capacities in its collective character, which do not belong to the natural persons composing it.” Trustees of Dartmouth Col lege v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 667 (1819). As a result of its separate legal personhood, a corporation could “sue and be sued by its own members” and “contract with them in the same manner as with any strangers.” Id., at 667–668.

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