Definition
In Scots law, actions ordinary are all civil actions that are not rescissory in character — that is, any lawsuit seeking a remedy other than the reduction (annulment) or setting aside of a legal act, deed, or instrument. The category is defined negatively: it captures the broad field of ordinary civil litigation by distinguishing it from the narrow class of rescissory actions, which aim specifically at undoing prior legal transactions or judgments.
The term does not denote a particular cause of action but rather a classificatory label within the procedural taxonomy of Scots law, grouping together the everyday run of civil proceedings — actions for debt, damages, performance, declaratory relief, and the like — as distinguished from the specialized remedy of reduction.
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Common Confusion
ACTIONS ORDINARY vs. RESCISSORY ACTIONS: These two categories are mutually exclusive and together comprise the basic division of civil actions in classical Scots law. Rescissory actions seek to void or undo a legal act; actions ordinary seek any other civil remedy. A researcher encountering either term must confirm which category applies before drawing conclusions about the nature of the proceedings described.
ACTIONS ORDINARY (Scots law) vs. ORDINARY ACTION (modern Scots procedure): Modern Scots civil procedure retains the term "ordinary action" as a procedural track in the sheriff court and Court of Session, distinct from summary or commercial procedures. These are related but not identical concepts. The historical "actions ordinary" is a substantive classification; the modern "ordinary action" is primarily a procedural designation based on track and timetable. Do not read one into the other when working across time periods.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a Scots law term of art with no direct English common law equivalent. Researchers will encounter it primarily in older Scots institutional writers and in treatises drawing on that tradition.
The sole authoritative source cited across all three historical dictionaries is Erskine's *Institutes of the Law of Scotland* (Book 4, Title 1, Section 18). Any deeper research into the term's scope or application should begin there. The dictionaries function here as secondary guides pointing to a primary institutional text.
The negative definition — everything that is not rescissory — is deliberately broad and should be treated as a residual category. Its practical value in historical research is confirmatory: when a source describes a proceeding as an action ordinary, it signals that the remedy sought was not reduction or annulment, which can help a researcher characterize the nature of the dispute and the relief sought without necessarily identifying the specific cause of action.
Researchers working with pre-19th-century Scottish court records, petitions, or pleadings may encounter this classification used to frame jurisdictional or procedural arguments. It carries less independent weight in post-reform Scots procedure but continues to appear in scholarship discussing the historical structure of Scots civil law.
The term has no meaningful application to English, American, or other common law jurisdictions. If encountered in an American or English legal source, it is almost certainly a direct borrowing or quotation from a Scots law context rather than a native term of art.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: all three entries are verbatim or near-verbatim identical, each defining actions ordinary as "all actions which are not rescissory" and each citing the same passage from Erskine's *Institutes* (4, 1, 18). This unanimity reflects the narrow, well-settled nature of the term within Scots institutional law rather than independent analysis by the dictionary editors.
None of the three historical sources elaborates beyond the single sentence. No examples are given, no procedural context is supplied, and no comparison to analogous categories in other legal systems is offered. For a term this compressed, the dictionaries are best understood as pointers to Erskine rather than standalone authorities. Researchers should not mistake the brevity of the entry for simplicity of the underlying law — the Scots institutional literature on civil actions is considerably richer than any dictionary entry conveys.
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Jurisdictional Note
Actions ordinary is a term of Scots law with no direct equivalent in English common law or American law. It belongs to a legal tradition shaped by civilian and Roman law influences distinct from the English writ system. Researchers applying this term outside a Scots law context should proceed with caution.
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