Quasi Corporations

This term is applied to such bodies or municipal societies, which, though not vested with the general powers of corporations, are yet recognized by statutes or immemorial usage, as persons or aggregate corporations, with precise duties which may be enforced, and privileges which may be maintained by suits at law. They may be considered qua corporations, with limited powers, coextensive with the duties imposed upon them by statute or usage; but restrained from a general use of the authority, which belongs to those metaphysical persons by the common law.

Among quasi corporations may be ranked towns, townships, parishes, hundreds, and other political divisions of counties, which are established without an express charter of incorporation; commissioners of a county, supervisors of highways, overseers of the poor, loan officers of a county, and the like, who are invested with corporate powers sub modo, and for a few specified purposes only. But not such a body as the general assembly of the Presbyterian church, which has not the capacity to sue and be sued.
   

This entry contains material from Bouvier's Legal Dictionary, a work published in the 1850's.