Definition
An alien amy (from the Law French ami, meaning friend) is an alien who is a subject or citizen of a foreign nation that is at peace with the sovereign state in question. The term is the counterpart to alien enemy and reflects the distinction in international law between nationals of friendly or neutral powers and nationals of hostile ones. An alien amy is generally entitled to the protection of the host country's laws, to own and convey property, to bring suit in its courts, and to enjoy most civil rights not expressly reserved to citizens — at least for so long as peace between the two sovereigns is maintained.
Common Language
The word amy is Law French for friend. It has no independent standing in modern English and appears in current usage only in historical and legal contexts. The word alien in ordinary modern English (Wiktionary) carries the sense of a foreigner or, in science fiction, an extraterrestrial being. Historically, Webster's 1913 defined alien as "a foreigner; one born in, or belonging to, another country; one who is not a denizen or a citizen." The legal term alien amy is a compound of technical art: the first word carries its legal force and the second carries a qualifying status — friendship between sovereigns — that has no counterpart in everyday speech. A researcher encountering amy in a historical legal text should not read it as a proper name; it is a status descriptor rooted in the law of nations.
Common Confusion
Alien amy is frequently confused with, or inadequately distinguished from, alien enemy. The two terms are legal opposites and their consequences under the common law are substantial. An alien enemy could be barred from suing in English courts, holding real property, or enforcing contracts during wartime. An alien amy retained those capacities. The status was determined not by the individual's conduct but by the diplomatic relationship between sovereigns at the time of the relevant act. A person who was an alien amy when a contract was made could become an alien enemy if war broke out before performance, with significant legal consequences for that contract's enforceability.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in colonial-era, early republic, or 19th-century Anglo-American legal materials will encounter alien amy most frequently in property disputes, commercial contract litigation, and prize law. Several traps arise:
First, the term's Law French origin means it appears in variant spellings across historical sources — ami, amie, amy — and may be rendered in italics or roman type without consistency. Search strategies must account for all variants.
Second, the status was inherently contingent. Because it tracked the diplomatic standing between governments rather than any quality of the individual, a single person's legal capacity could shift during the pendency of a lawsuit. Courts at common law and in equity developed doctrines to manage these mid-litigation changes, and researchers examining 18th- and 19th-century cases must identify whether the political relationship between sovereigns had changed during the period at issue.
Third, American materials after independence occasionally import English precedents on alien amy and alien enemy without acknowledging that the federal structure complicated the analysis: a person might be an alien amy with respect to the United States while facing different treatment under the law of a particular state.
Fourth, the distinction between alien amy and alien enemy carries into prize law and admiralty. In prize proceedings, the nationality of a vessel's cargo owner — friend or enemy — determined whether the cargo was subject to condemnation, and the alien amy / alien enemy line was central to those proceedings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's and Burrill's are in agreement on the core definition: an alien amy is an alien subject or citizen of a power at peace with the sovereign in question. Black's formulation ("at peace with our own") is appropriately brief. Burrill's is more useful for the researcher because it preserves Lord Bacon's complementary definition of alien enemy — one born under the obedience of a king or state in hostility with the king of England — which clarifies the binary structure of the doctrine and anchors the alien amy concept by opposition.
Neither dictionary addresses the contingent nature of the status with sufficient depth for the researcher. Neither explains how courts handled the transition from amy to enemy status, nor do they address the American constitutional complications arising from congressional power over naturalization and the separate question of state-level property rights. Burrill's preservation of the phrase "alien in league" — a subject of one that is in league with the sovereign — is historically useful because it reflects the older diplomatic vocabulary of leagues and treaties that predates the modern law of nations framework, and researchers reading early modern English sources will find that phrase operative.
Jurisdictional Note
In England, the alien amy / alien enemy distinction was developed through common law courts and prize courts and was never fully codified in a comprehensive statute. In the United States, the distinction informed the federal enemy alien statutes that persist, in much altered form, to the present day. Researchers should not assume that common law alien amy doctrine translates directly into modern American immigration or national security law, which operates under a distinct statutory framework.