Definition
A formal proceeding instituted in a court of justice by which one party seeks to enforce or protect a right, obtain a remedy for a wrong, or prevent the commission of a wrong. The term encompasses the entire legal proceeding from its commencement through judgment.
In its broadest legal sense, "action" carries two related but distinct meanings:
1. PROCEDURAL: The formal mechanism by which a party invokes judicial power — the lawsuit itself, including all proceedings from filing through final judgment. A plaintiff brings an action; the court adjudicates it.
2. BEHAVIORAL: Conduct, act, or series of acts — something done or performed. Used in this sense when courts and statutes describe the behavior of parties (a tortfeasor's action; the action of an agent on behalf of a principal).
In modern federal practice and in most states following code pleading reform, the historic distinction between "action at law" and "suit in equity" has been abolished. A single form of civil action now replaces the old dual system. This collapse of categories is critical for historical research: sources before the mid-nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth century in some jurisdictions, use "action" to mean specifically a proceeding at common law, as distinguished from a "suit" in equity or a "proceeding" in admiralty.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A demand or signal for the start of something, usually a performance; more broadly, the process or condition of acting or moving, as opposed to rest.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A process or condition of acting or moving; an act, deed, or enterprise; habitual deeds; the effect of power exerted on one body by another.
The common-language senses are broad and general — action as motion, as doing, as deed. The legal sense is narrower and highly specific: a formal judicial proceeding with defined parties, a structured claim, and a court's coercive power behind it. A reader encountering "action" in a legal text cannot assume it means merely "something done." In procedural contexts it almost always means the lawsuit or proceeding itself, not the underlying conduct that gave rise to it.
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Common Confusion
ACTION vs. CAUSE OF ACTION: These are not synonyms. The action is the proceeding — the lawsuit. The cause of action is the underlying legal claim or right that entitles a party to bring the proceeding. A single action may contain multiple causes of action. Historical sources sometimes use the terms interchangeably, which can obscure whether a court is speaking about procedural standing to sue or the substantive right being asserted.
ACTION vs. SUIT: Before procedural merger, this distinction was technical and significant. An "action" lay at common law (contract, tort, ejectment); a "suit" lay in equity (injunction, specific performance, accounting). Post-merger sources use the terms loosely and often interchangeably. Researchers working in pre-merger sources — anything before the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) at the federal level, or before analogous state code reforms — must track which court system is being discussed.
ACTION vs. PROCEEDING: "Proceeding" is broader than "action" and includes administrative proceedings, in rem proceedings, and ancillary matters that do not constitute a full civil action between adverse parties. Some statutes use both terms in the same sentence, signaling that the distinction still carries operative weight.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The common law developed an elaborate taxonomy of forms of action — rigid procedural categories, each with its own pleading requirements, applicable writs, and available remedies. The major divisions:
ACTIONS AT LAW (common law forms):
- Real actions: To recover land or other real property interests.
- Personal actions: To recover debts, damages, or personal property; subdivided into actions ex contractu (arising from contract) and actions ex delicto (arising from wrong or tort).
- Mixed actions: Combining elements of real and personal actions.
Within personal actions, the classical forms included assumpsit, debt, covenant, detinue, replevin, trespass, trespass on the case, trover, and ejectment — each a distinct procedural vehicle with its own rules.
ACTIONS IN EQUITY: Historically not "actions" at all in the strict sense but "suits," proceeding under different rules and before different tribunals. The merger of law and equity eliminated this as a formal category in most American jurisdictions.
AMICABLE ACTION: An action brought by mutual consent of parties to obtain a court's ruling on a doubtful question of law, the facts being settled by agreement. A controlled vehicle for securing an advisory or declaratory judgment where the procedural mechanism for doing so did not otherwise exist.
TRANSITORY vs. LOCAL ACTIONS: Transitory actions are those where the cause of action could have arisen anywhere and venue is flexible. Local actions are tied to a specific place (classically, real property actions) and must be brought where the subject matter is located. The distinction still carries some procedural weight in venue analysis.
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Why It Matters in Research
The single most important research trap: "action" is a moving target across time and jurisdiction.
PRE-MERGER SOURCES: In any source predating the abolition of the forms of action in your target jurisdiction, "action" has a precise technical meaning. It refers to a proceeding at common law, distinguished from equity suits. The form of action selected by the plaintiff determined what could be pleaded, what could be proved, and what remedies were available. A researcher who reads a nineteenth-century treatise or case without understanding this framework will misread the holding. The form of action is often the dispositive issue, not merely procedural background.
POST-MERGER SOURCES: After code pleading and the Federal Rules, "action" becomes more casual — it usually means simply "lawsuit." But older terminology bleeds through. Courts and treatises trained in the common law tradition continue to use phrases like "action on the case," "action of assumpsit," or "personal action" even after formal abolition, sometimes as historical reference, sometimes because the old distinctions still carry analytical weight in the jurisdiction.
LATIN FORMS: Historical sources, particularly Rapalje & Lawrence and Burrill, contain extensive treatment of Latin actio forms from Roman and civil law: actio commodati directa, actio communi dividundo, actio damni injuria, and many others. These are not merely antiquarian. Civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec) and admiralty practice carried Roman actio forms into American legal usage. A researcher working in those areas will encounter these terms as operative law, not historical curiosity.
CORPUS CONNECTIONS: "Action" connects directly to pleading doctrine, jurisdiction and venue, standing, remedies, and the law of limitations. Many limitations statutes historically specified the time within which a particular form of action had to be brought — not simply "a claim," but the specific procedural form. Identifying the applicable action-type is necessary to determine the correct limitations period in historical research.
THE MAXIM ACTIO PERSONALIS MORITUR CUM PERSONA: "A personal right of action dies with the person." This common law rule — that personal actions in tort did not survive the death of either party — is embedded in the historical sources and shaped survival and wrongful death statutes across American jurisdictions. Researchers tracing the development of wrongful death law must understand this background rule to understand what the statutes were reversing.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the procedural core: an action is a formal judicial proceeding by which a right is claimed and may be enforced or resisted. Burrill states it with particular clarity — "the formal means or method of pursuing and recovering one's right in a court of justice." Black's (1st Ed.) tracks closely: "the legal and formal demand of one's right from another person or party made and insisted on in a court of justice."
Where the sources diverge is in scope and taxonomy. Bouvier gives significant attention to transitory actions and to the French law meaning of action as stock or shares in a corporation — a usage that disappears entirely from common law American practice but remains relevant for researchers working in Louisiana sources or early French colonial records. Rapalje & Lawrence, consistent with their civil law orientation, provide an extensive catalog of Latin actio forms that the common law dictionaries treat more briefly.
The historical sources are weakest on the post-merger unified civil action. They were written in the world of forms, and their taxonomies presuppose that world. A researcher using these dictionaries to understand modern "action" must supply the context that code pleading and the Federal Rules transformed: the categories they describe with such precision are largely abolished as formal requirements, though they survive as analytical categories and as background for interpreting older authority.
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Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana and other civil law jurisdictions retain distinct action-terminology drawn from Roman law, including actio forms that have no common law equivalent. In federal practice, Rule 2 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that there is one form of civil action, collapsing the law/equity distinction. State jurisdictions vary in the degree to which they have completed this merger — a small number retain separate law and equity dockets in some form.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Forms of Action (primary reference for the historical taxonomy and pleading requirements of common law action-types)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Civil Procedure (merger of law and equity; modern civil action framework)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Common Law Pleading (relationship between form of action and pleading rules)
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