Body Politic

What does Body Politic mean in American Law?

The definition of Body Politic in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

A term usually used to refer to whole political structure of a nation or subdivision thereof, not so much the formal institutions but the whole citizenry regarded in their political rather than private and personal nature. Only rarely used as an inflated locution for a political body. The term is one of the large numbers of organic-person metaphors often and for a long time used of the state (“The King is the head of the Commonwealth, the knighthood the right arm, the clergy the soul, the people the trunk and legs . . . etc.”) and as such, like all metaphors, dangerously misleading, e.g., if you cut off a head, a body dies; a state just changes its structure when you depose a King.

Body Politic