  That thesis falls within those parts of legal theory that are acknowledged but not much explored by contemporary legal positivists. It was ignored and in effect denied by earlier forms of legal positivism more ambitious to cover the whole of legal philosophy, e.g., Kelsen’s. Kelsen denied that persons were known either to law or to a proper legal theory or science of law, except insofar as they were made the subject of a posited legal rule. But against this restriction, which has misled some courts which have treated Kelsenian legal science as a guide to judicial reasoning, it can be said (Finnis 2000) that the fundamental equality and dignity of human beings should defended as part of a rationally sound understanding (concept) of law. This defense requires an account of the difference between capacities which are activated here and now, or are more or less ready to be so actuated, and radical capacities such as exist in the epigenetic primordia of even very young human beings, and in the genetic and somatic constitution of even the severely disabled.  Though such an account makes possible a defense of the fundamental equality of human beings, and thus a humanist legal theory, the point of the account is not to privilege a biological species as such, but to affirm the juridical significance of the status of persons—substances of a rational nature—as inherently the bearers (subjects) of rights of a kind different and more respect-worthy and end-like than the rights which are often, as a matter of technical means, attributed by law to animals, idols, ships or other objects of legal proceedings.