AMP

Definition

AMP is an archaic abbreviation appearing in older legal manuscripts and printed authorities, most commonly as a contracted form of *amovetur* or related Latin terms signifying removal — particularly the removal of an officer or member from a corporation or public body. In historical legal usage, the term surfaces in the context of corporate law and municipal governance to denote the act or fact of a person being displaced from an office or position of trust. The abbreviation is not a term of art in modern law and carries no operative legal meaning in contemporary practice or pleading.

Common Confusion

AMP as an abbreviation should not be confused with *AMOND* or *AMUNT* (old European law terms for freedom from wardship), which appear nearby in Burrill's alphabetical arrangement. The visual proximity in older printed dictionaries has occasionally caused researchers to conflate these unrelated terms. The corporate-removal meaning of *amp* and the personal-status meaning of *amond* have no legal relationship.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering "amp." or "amp" in pre-nineteenth-century legal texts, particularly English reports and early American treatises, should treat it as a probable abbreviation rather than a standalone term. The risk of misreading is real: abbreviated Latin contractions in manuscript and early print sources are frequently ambiguous, and *amp* could stand for *amplior* (more ample, further) or for removal-related Latin terms depending on context. When the surrounding text concerns corporate membership, officer tenure, or municipal franchise, the removal meaning is the operative one. Burrill's entry connects this abbreviation to *amotion* — the formal doctrine governing removal of corporate officers — and cites authorities including Salkeld and Strange, suggesting this usage was well-established in English common law reports. Researchers working with those reporters should cross-check against the *amotion* doctrine directly. The proximity of *amp* to the entry for *AMOND* (meaning freedom from wardship or guardianship in old European law) in Burrill's arrangement is coincidental and not substantively connected. Do not conflate these entries.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical source represented here, and its entry is fragmentary — the abbreviation appears within a truncated passage that transitions between multiple headwords. The surrounding text references *amotion* (removal of an officer from a corporation), citing 2 Salkeld 436, 1 Strange 640, 2 Burrow 723 and 732, and 2 Kent's Commentaries 297–298. This places the *amp* abbreviation squarely within the corporate removal doctrine as understood in early American and English jurisprudence. No other historical legal dictionaries in the current corpus supply a dedicated entry for *AMP* as a standalone term. The abbreviation's meaning must therefore be inferred from context and from the fuller treatment of *amotion* in the same sources.

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