Definition
Approved, in legal usage, generally means formally sanctioned, confirmed, or endorsed by a competent authority — whether a court, administrative body, legislature, or supervising officer. The term appears across many legal contexts with subtly different weight depending on the actor granting approval and the consequence of that approval.
In criminal law, "approved" carries a specific and demanding meaning when applied to a defendant's conduct. A person who is voluntarily present at the commission of a crime and who approves of that crime may be held criminally liable as a principal or aider and abettor. In this context, approval is not mere passive consent or indifference — it requires something more active: an assenting state of mind coupled with presence that in some meaningful way encourages or endorses the criminal act.
In procedural and transactional law, "approved" signals that a proposed act, instrument, or agreement has passed formal review and received the necessary authorization to be operative. Court-approved settlements, approved plats, and approved plans each represent a different institutional actor exercising a sanctioning function, but the common thread is that approval converts a tentative or proposed state into a legally recognized and enforceable one.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Having received approval; proven or demonstrated by experience.
The common meaning tracks reasonably closely to the legal meaning in transactional and administrative contexts — approved simply means officially sanctioned. The gap opens in criminal law. In ordinary speech, a bystander might "approve of" something in the sense of passively liking or not objecting to it. In criminal law, that passive sense is expressly insufficient. Courts have held that "approved," as used to assign criminal liability for presence at an unlawful act, requires something beyond mere consent or silent acquiescence — it implies an active, encouraging, or endorsing mental state that goes materially further than the word's everyday usage might suggest.
Common Confusion
Approved vs. Consented To: These terms are not interchangeable in criminal liability analysis. Consent often describes a passive agreement or non-objection. Approval, as courts have interpreted it in aiding-and-abetting and presence-at-a-crime contexts, requires a more affirmative mental posture. A researcher encountering "approved" in jury instructions or appellate opinions analyzing criminal presence must not read it as a synonym for mere consent.
Approved vs. Adopted or Ratified: In legislative and administrative contexts, "approved," "adopted," and "ratified" are sometimes used loosely as synonyms but carry distinct procedural meanings depending on the governing statute or rule. An approved plat and a ratified plat may have different legal effects depending on local ordinance. Check the operative instrument carefully.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "approved" is a research trap precisely because it is so common and appears to be self-explanatory. Its meaning shifts materially depending on context, and historical sources — including jury instructions and appellate opinions from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — used it in ways that do not always map cleanly onto modern doctrine.
In criminal law research: When tracing aiding-and-abetting doctrine or presence-at-crime liability in older sources, pay close attention to how courts define approved in jury instruction challenges. The Kentucky opinion cited in Bouvier's signals an early judicial recognition that the word could mislead jurors if left undefined, because its common meaning undersells the mental element required. Researchers examining similar instructions in other jurisdictions should look for parallel definitional clarifications.
In family law research: Court approval of marital settlement agreements is a formal act with jurisdictional consequences. An agreement described as "approved" by a court is not merely acknowledged — it is typically incorporated into a decree and may be enforced through contempt. The distinction between an approved agreement and a merely filed or acknowledged one is substantively important and varies by jurisdiction.
In land use and real estate research: Subdivision approval is a multi-stage process in most jurisdictions, involving preliminary approval, final approval, and sometimes conditional approval. These stages carry different legal effects — a preliminary approval does not vest development rights in the same way a final approved plat does. Older sources and local ordinances may use "approved" without specifying the stage, which can obscure which legal threshold has actually been crossed.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary addresses "approved" only in the specific context of criminal liability for presence at a crime, citing a Kentucky opinion for the proposition that approval means more than ordinary consent. This is a narrow but genuinely useful entry: it identifies an interpretive problem that courts had already recognized by the late nineteenth century and flags that the word carries a heightened meaning when it operates to attach criminal liability.
What Bouvier's does not cover — and what the historical dictionary literature generally leaves to context — is the broad administrative and transactional usage of "approved." That usage was so pervasive and seemingly obvious that historical dictionaries rarely paused to define it. Researchers should not take this silence as confirmation that the term was uncontested; it simply reflected the era's assumption that institutional approval was self-defining. Modern corpus research should fill this gap by examining the operative statutes and local rules that governed each approval process.
Jurisdictional Note
The legal consequences of approval vary significantly by context and jurisdiction. In land use law, the distinction between preliminary and final approval — and what rights attach at each stage — is governed by state enabling statutes and local ordinances that differ considerably. In family law, whether a court's approval of a settlement agreement makes it modifiable as a court order or enforceable only as a contract depends on controlling state law and how the decree is drafted.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Marital Settlement Agreements — Negotiation and Court Approval (The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia)
Subdivision Regulation — Approval Process, Dedications, and Exactions (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)
Subdivision — Platting Requirements, Subdivision Regulations, and Approval Process (The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia)