Definition
In law, "actions" is the plural of "action," which refers to a formal proceeding brought in a court of law by one party against another to enforce a right, redress a wrong, or prevent an injury. The term encompasses the full range of judicial proceedings available to a litigant — from claims sounding in contract or tort to proceedings in equity and statutory causes of action.
Because the term is so broad, its significance in legal research lies less in any single definition and more in how the concept has been categorized, divided, and reformed across legal history.
1. Action at law: A proceeding in a common law court, historically constrained by the forms of action (assumpsit, trespass, trover, ejectment, and others), each carrying its own procedural requirements and remedies.
2. Action in equity: A proceeding in a court of chancery or equity, seeking relief not available at common law — injunctions, specific performance, accounting, and the like. Historically separate from actions at law; procedurally merged in most American jurisdictions.
3. Cause of action: The specific legal theory or factual basis upon which a party's right to sue rests. Distinct from "action" itself, which refers to the proceeding; "cause of action" refers to the underlying legal claim.
4. Moral actions: In jurisprudence, acts subject to ethical evaluation. Bouvier's cross-references "moral actions" as a distinct entry, reflecting the older practice of distinguishing legally cognizable acts from those governed only by conscience or natural law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Third-person singular simple present indicative of "action" — as in "she actions the request," meaning she carries out or implements something.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Acts, deeds, or conduct; also theatrical or dramatic movements; the processes of physical or mechanical operation.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is structural, not subtle. Ordinary usage treats "actions" as simply the plural of acts or conduct. Legal usage imports an entire taxonomy — formal proceedings, procedural forms, rights of suit — that has no counterpart in everyday speech. A researcher encountering "actions" in a historical legal text should assume a technical meaning connected to court proceedings or recognized categories of legal proceeding, not merely conduct or behavior.
Common Confusion
Actions vs. causes of action: An "action" is the lawsuit or judicial proceeding itself. A "cause of action" is the legal basis for bringing it. You can have a cause of action without yet having commenced an action. The two terms are routinely conflated in both primary and secondary sources.
Actions at law vs. actions in equity: Before procedural merger (achieved federally in the United States by the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure), these were proceedings in separate courts with separate remedies and separate procedural tracks. Historical sources written before merger treat the distinction as fundamental. Post-merger sources often collapse it. Researchers working across that boundary must track which era a source inhabits.
Actions vs. moral actions: Bouvier's directs readers from "actions" to "moral actions" as a cross-reference, signaling a jurisprudential use of the term that refers to human conduct evaluated under natural or moral law — entirely distinct from judicial proceedings. Context determines which meaning is operative.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Historically, common law recognized a rigid taxonomy of forms of action, each a distinct procedural vehicle:
- Personal actions: Brought to recover debts, damages, or personal property (debt, covenant, assumpsit, trespass, case, trover, replevin, detinue).
- Real actions: Brought to recover land or other real property. Largely obsolete by the nineteenth century in most American jurisdictions.
- Mixed actions: Combining elements of both personal and real relief.
- Civil actions: The modern successor category, broadly encompassing non-criminal judicial proceedings after the abolition of the forms of action.
- Criminal actions: Proceedings by the state or sovereign against an individual for violation of public law.
- Ex dolo malo actions: Bouvier's flags the maxim ex dolo malo non oritur actio — no action arises from fraud committed by the plaintiff. A cause of action tainted at its root by the claimant's own fraud is not cognizable.
Why It Matters in Research
The single greatest research trap with "actions" in historical legal sources is the forms of action. Before procedural reform — in England, before the Common Law Procedure Acts of the 1850s; in the United States, before Field Code reforms beginning in 1848 and federal merger in 1938 — the form of action was not a technicality. It was the proceeding. Choosing the wrong form meant losing the case regardless of the merits. Historical judicial opinions, treatises, and pleading manuals assume this framework. A researcher reading an antebellum American case must understand whether the action was in assumpsit, trespass, or case before the substantive law analysis makes sense.
After merger, "action" becomes largely synonymous with "civil suit," and the elaborate taxonomy collapses into a single procedural vehicle. Sources written after merger may use "action" loosely in ways that would have been technically imprecise before it.
Bouvier's cross-reference to "moral actions" signals a second, jurisprudential register in which "actions" refers to human conduct evaluated under natural law — relevant to nineteenth-century treatises on legal theory and ethics, not to procedure.
The ex dolo malo maxim flagged in Bouvier's connects to a durable principle in equity: courts will not aid a party whose own wrongdoing is the foundation of the claim. Researchers encountering this doctrine in historical sources should track it forward through the "unclean hands" doctrine in equity.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not offer a standalone substantive definition of "actions" in the surviving entries provided — instead directing readers to "moral actions" as a cross-reference and invoking the ex dolo malo maxim in a related entry. This reflects Bouvier's general practice of treating the forms of action as the primary organizing structure for procedural law, with individual forms (debt, assumpsit, trespass, etc.) receiving their own detailed entries rather than being consolidated under a single "actions" heading.
What Bouvier's omits — and what researchers should supply from other sources — is a synthetic account of the forms of action as a system, their abolition, and the transition to code pleading. For that, secondary sources such as Maitland's lectures on the forms of action and Stephen on Pleading remain foundational.
Jurisdictional Note
Procedural merger of law and equity occurred at different times across jurisdictions. The federal courts merged in 1938. Many states followed, but the timing varied by decades. A small number of states maintained separate equity courts or distinct equity practice well into the twentieth century. Researchers working in state court records must verify whether their target jurisdiction and period operated under merged or unmerged procedure.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Forms of Action; Civil Procedure; Equity