Modern property rights conceive of ownership and possession as belonging to legal individuals, even if the legal individual is not a real person. Corporations, for example, have legal rights similar to American citizens, including many of their constitutional rights. Therefore, the corporation is a juristic person or artificial legal entity, which some refer to as "corporate personhood".
Property rights are protected in the current laws of states usually found in the form of a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The fifth and the fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution, for example, provide explicitly for the protection of private property:
The Fifth Amendment states: