Definition
"As to personal actions" is a phrase of procedural classification used in historical common law practice to describe rules, limitations, and procedures that apply specifically to personal actions — civil lawsuits seeking money damages or the recovery of personal property, as distinguished from real actions (which sought recovery of land) or mixed actions (which combined both). The phrase most commonly appears as a heading or qualifier in treatises and digests, signaling that the rule about to be stated governs personal actions only and does not extend to real or mixed actions.
In the specific context where Bouvier employs the phrase — statutes of limitations — "as to personal actions" signals that personal actions must be commenced within a fixed period from the date the cause of action accrues, and that the rule determining when that period begins to run is the central analytical question.
Common Confusion
"Personal actions" does not mean lawsuits involving personal injury, though personal injury claims are one species of personal action. The classification is structural, not subject-matter-based: a personal action is any civil claim that runs against a person (in personam) rather than against property (in rem). Debt, assumpsit, trespass, conversion, defamation, and contract breach are all personal actions. Researchers encountering "personal action" in historical sources should resist reading it as a synonym for tort or bodily injury claim.
The phrase should also not be confused with "personal jurisdiction," which concerns a court's authority over a defendant's person — a separate and later-developing doctrine.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase functions almost exclusively as an organizational marker in pre-twentieth-century legal digests, treatises, and pleading manuals. It signals that the reader is entering rules scoped to one branch of the old common law action-classification system. Researchers working in Law Mind historical sources will encounter it most often in two contexts:
First, in statutes of limitations discussions, where Bouvier and similar authorities distinguish the limitation periods for personal actions (typically six years or fewer at common law) from those applicable to real actions (which historically carried much longer limitation periods — often twenty years). The operative question Bouvier raises — when does the cause of action accrue — remains the central limitation issue in modern law, but modern sources have abandoned the personal/real/mixed tripartite framework almost entirely.
Second, in pleading and venue materials, where the applicable rules for personal actions differed from those governing real actions. Personal actions historically followed the defendant (the lawsuit could be brought wherever the defendant was found), while real actions were tied to the situs of the property.
The practical research trap: a modern researcher reading a nineteenth-century statute of limitations case will encounter holdings framed as applying "to personal actions" and may not immediately recognize that this is an exhaustive category encompassing contract, tort, and property-recovery claims alike. Missing this framing can cause a researcher to misread the scope of a holding — treating a rule as narrowly applicable when it was broadly intended, or vice versa.
Because the common law system of forms of action was formally abolished in most American jurisdictions by the mid-to-late nineteenth century (following the Field Code reforms beginning in 1848) and in England by the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875, the phrase "as to personal actions" is largely absent from twentieth-century and modern sources. Its appearance in a source is itself a chronological signal: the source almost certainly predates or reflects pre-Code pleading assumptions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary uses the phrase as a section heading governing statutes of limitations, introducing the rule that personal actions must be brought within a specified period — typically six years or less — from accrual of the cause of action. Bouvier's primary analytical contribution in this section is identifying the accrual question as the operative problem: when, precisely, does the clock begin to run? This framing anticipates the modern "accrual rule" debate and shows that the core doctrinal tension in limitation law is not a modern invention.
Bouvier does not define "personal action" at length under this entry — the phrase presupposes familiarity with the common law classification system. Modern researchers should cross-reference Bouvier's separate entries on "action," "real action," and "mixed action" to reconstruct the full taxonomic framework the phrase inhabits.
No other source dictionaries were available for synthesis on this entry. The phrase does not appear as a defined term in later American legal dictionaries, which reflects the success of code pleading in dissolving the categorical importance of the personal/real/mixed distinction.
Jurisdictional Note
The personal/real/mixed action classification system was operative across common law jurisdictions but was abolished at different times. American states that adopted Field Code reforms beginning in the 1850s were earliest to eliminate it. Federal practice followed with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938. Researchers working in Louisiana sources should note that Louisiana's civil law tradition organized actions differently; Bouvier's citation to 13 La. Ann. 161 in this context reflects Louisiana's partial adoption of common law limitation concepts despite its distinct underlying framework.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — Personal Property: Intellectual Property as Personal Property (Overview)