Definition
Appropriation is the act of setting apart, designating, or applying something — typically money, property, or a legal entitlement — to a specific use, purpose, or person, to the exclusion of other uses or claimants. The term operates across several distinct legal contexts, each with its own doctrinal framework.
1. PUBLIC LAW / LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATION. The formal act by which a legislature designates a specific sum of public funds for a specific governmental purpose. A legislative appropriation authorizes the executive branch to draw upon public funds and constitutes both a grant of authority and a limitation — funds appropriated for one purpose ordinarily cannot be redirected without further legislative action. Constitutional provisions in most U.S. jurisdictions require that no money be drawn from the public treasury except pursuant to appropriation made by law.
2. CONTRACTS / APPROPRIATION OF PAYMENTS. When a debtor owes multiple debts to the same creditor and makes a payment insufficient to satisfy all of them, the rules of appropriation determine which debt is discharged. The debtor has the primary right to direct application of the payment at the time it is made; if the debtor fails to do so, the creditor may apply the payment as the creditor sees fit; if neither party exercises the right, courts will apply the payment in the manner most beneficial to the debtor, or according to equitable principles such as applying funds first to interest, then to principal, or to the earlier debt.
3. PROPERTY LAW / PRIOR APPROPRIATION (WATER RIGHTS). In western U.S. jurisdictions, appropriation is the act of diverting water from a natural source and applying it to a beneficial use, thereby establishing a priority right to continued use of that quantity of water. Under the prior appropriation doctrine, the first user to appropriate water for beneficial use holds the senior right, enforceable against later appropriators in times of shortage ("first in time, first in right").
4. TORTS / APPROPRIATION OF LIKENESS. A recognized branch of the tort of invasion of privacy, consisting of the unauthorized use of a person's name, image, or identity for commercial advantage. Unlike other privacy torts, appropriation focuses on the commercial exploitation of personal identity rather than on emotional harm or unwanted disclosure.
5. ECCLESIASTICAL LAW (HISTORICAL). The perpetual annexation of a church benefice to a spiritual corporation — a monastery, college, or other ecclesiastical body — which then received the tithes and revenues, subject to an obligation to appoint a vicar for spiritual service. Distinguished from impropriation, which was annexation to a lay corporation. This meaning is largely obsolete outside historical English ecclesiastical legal sources.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An act or instance of appropriating; anything set apart for a specific purpose; public funds designated for a specific use; in art, the use of borrowed elements in a new work.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of setting apart or assigning to a particular use or person, or of taking to one's self in exclusion of all others; application to a special use or purpose.
The gap between common and legal meaning is meaningful in two directions. In ordinary speech, appropriation increasingly carries a pejorative connotation — "cultural appropriation" suggests unauthorized or exploitative taking. In law, appropriation is often a neutral or affirmatively authorized act: a legislature appropriates funds by design, and a water user appropriates a resource through lawful exercise of a recognized right. The torts meaning — appropriation of likeness — sits closer to the critical common usage but remains distinct: the legal wrong lies in commercial exploitation without consent, not in cultural borrowing or influence.
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Common Confusion
APPROPRIATION vs. AUTHORIZATION. In legislative practice, an authorization statute establishes a program and sets a spending ceiling; an appropriation statute actually provides the funds. These are separate legislative acts, and authorization without appropriation does not release money. Researchers encountering historical debates about whether an activity was "authorized" should confirm whether a separate appropriation was enacted.
APPROPRIATION vs. EXPROPRIATION / TAKING. Appropriation in property law involves voluntary first use establishing a right; expropriation or eminent domain involves compelled government acquisition of private property with compensation. The terms are not interchangeable, though some older and foreign-law sources use "appropriation" loosely to mean government seizure.
APPROPRIATION OF PAYMENTS vs. APPLICATION OF PAYMENTS. These phrases are functional synonyms in contracts law. Older English and American sources favor "appropriation"; modern American practice often uses "application." Both describe the same rule set. Researchers using one term should search under both in historical sources.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Legislative Appropriation: Specific (a named project or agency), general (a broad governmental function), continuing (not limited to a single fiscal year), or supplemental (additional funds for an ongoing appropriation). Deficiency appropriations cover unanticipated shortfalls.
Prior Appropriation (Water): Absolute (a fixed quantity regardless of natural variation) or conditional (an adjudicated priority not yet fully perfected by completion of works and application to beneficial use). Some western states also recognize instream flow appropriations for environmental purposes.
Appropriation of Likeness (Tort): Some jurisdictions bifurcate this into the common law privacy tort and a distinct right of publicity, which may survive death and is assignable as property. The two overlap but are not identical.
Ecclesiastical Appropriation (Historical): Distinguished as rectorial appropriation (to a monastery or chapter holding the great tithes) versus vicarial, depending on how spiritual duties were allocated.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term's breadth is its central research hazard. A search for "appropriation" in the Law Mind corpus will surface materials from at least five distinct doctrinal areas without further filtering. Researchers should anchor searches with a domain qualifier — "legislative appropriation," "water appropriation," "appropriation of likeness" — or use adjacent terms specific to the relevant doctrine.
In historical sources, ecclesiastical appropriation receives disproportionate treatment. Blackstone, Coke, and the canonical English dictionaries (Cowell, Termes de la Ley) address the benefice meaning at length because it was commercially and legally significant in pre-Reformation and post-Reformation England. Researchers in American law should expect to read past several paragraphs of ecclesiastical material before reaching the public law or contracts meaning in Bouvier and Burrill.
For legislative appropriation research, the doctrinal content of older dictionaries is thin relative to what the term has become. The constitutional dimension of the appropriations power — separation of powers, the anti-deficiency framework, the distinction from authorization — developed substantially through 20th-century federal practice and is not well-captured in the classic dictionaries. The Law Mind corpus materials on administrative and constitutional law will be more useful than dictionary entries for that research.
For water law, appropriation doctrine is almost entirely a western American development. Eastern sources, including most historical legal dictionaries, will not address it. The prior appropriation doctrine and its distinctions from riparian rights doctrine are addressed in the Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia.
In payments / contracts research, the rules of appropriation of payments were well-developed in English common law and appear consistently across Bouvier, Burrill, and Rapalje & Lawrence. The three-step hierarchy (debtor directs, then creditor directs, then court applies equitably) is stable across sources, though the older cases use "appropriation" exclusively where modern treatises may use "application."
For tort researchers, appropriation of likeness is a 20th-century development. No historical dictionary entry will address it. The right of publicity, which has partially displaced the privacy-tort framing in commercial contexts, postdates the classical dictionary sources entirely.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on two core meanings — legislative/public-law appropriation and ecclesiastical appropriation — and address appropriation of payments in the contracts section.
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) leads with public law appropriation, defining it as the legislative designation of public funds for a specific governmental purpose. This reflects the American constitutional context in which Black's was written and is the most practically useful definition for researchers in American public law.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the fullest source on appropriation of payments, tracing the debtor-creditor rule through English and American case authority and addressing the intersection with the statute of limitations — a debtor who directs payment to a time-barred debt may be found to have waived the limitations defense. Bouvier also covers ecclesiastical appropriation but more briefly than Burrill.
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most thorough treatment of ecclesiastical appropriation, with citations to Blackstone, Stephen's Commentaries, and Crabb's Real Property. Burrill correctly distinguishes appropriation (to a spiritual corporation) from impropriation (to a lay corporation), a distinction that matters when researching English land title or tithe history.
Rapalje & Lawrence contributes a useful note on appropriation in the sale-of-goods context: goods become appropriated to a contract — and property passes — when a specific identified quantity is separated and set aside for the buyer. This is relevant to historical commercial law research and connects to what became codified under UCC Article 2 concepts of identification and risk of loss.
All historical sources are silent on water rights appropriation and tort appropriation of likeness. Researchers should not expect coverage of these doctrines in any pre-20th-century dictionary source.
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Jurisdictional Note
Legislative appropriation doctrine is substantively similar across U.S. federal and state practice, though constitutional text varies and some states impose stricter single-subject or specificity requirements. Water rights appropriation is a western-states doctrine; eastern states follow riparian rights principles, and "appropriation" in the water context has no legal purchase in those jurisdictions. The tort of appropriation of likeness and the related right of publicity vary significantly by state, particularly regarding post-mortem duration and assignability.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Water Rights — Prior Appropriation Doctrine (Western States) (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)
Invasion of Privacy — Appropriation of Name or Likeness (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
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