Definition of "body politic" []

• The people of a politically organized nation or state considered as a group. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Simon Turner, Samuel High, Joseph Gales, John Marshall, William Boylan, and Henry Seawell, Esquires, shall be and they are hereby declared to be a body politic and corporate, to be known and distinguished by the name of "The Trustees of Raleigh Academy.""
• "During the Consulate the Council of State was not only a body politic collectively, but each individual member might be invested with special power; as, for example, when the First Consul sent Councillors of State on missions to each of the military divisions where there was a Court of Appeal, the instructions given them by the First Consul were extensive, and might be said to be unlimited."
• "The board of public instruction shall be a body politic in law; shall have a common seal and perpetual succession; shall by the name and style of "The Board of Public Instruction," be capable of suing and being sued, pleading and being impleaded; and shall have and enjoy all the rights and privileges of a corporation."