In law, ostensible authority refers to the apparent authority of an agent (usually a company irector) of a company as it appears to others, and it can operate both to enlarge actual authority and to create authority where no actual authority exists. The law relating to companies and to ostensible authority are in reality only a sub-set of the rules relating to apparent authority and the law of agency generally, but because of the prevalence of the issue in relation to corporate law (companies, being artificial persons, are only ever able to act at all through their human agents), it has developed its own specific body of case law. However, some jurisdictions use the terms interchangeably.