Definition
In legal usage, ASPECT refers to the alternative dimensions, faces, or possibilities presented within a single legal instrument or procedural posture. The term appears almost exclusively in two technical phrases:
1. Bill with a double aspect. A bill in equity framed with alternative averments — that is, pleading two different factual or legal theories in the alternative, each of which would entitle the complainant to substantially the same relief and each of which is subject to the same defenses. The pleader does not commit to one version of the facts but presents both faces of the dispute simultaneously.
2. Contingency with a double aspect. A remainder limited so that a second contingent remainder serves as a substitute for the first in the event the first fails, rather than operating in derogation of it. The classic form: land given to A for life, and if A have a son, to that son in fee; and if A have no son, to B in fee. The second remainder does not cut down the first — it simply takes effect in its place should the first never vest.
Outside these two phrases, ASPECT as a standalone term rarely carries independent legal weight. Its core implication in both usages is the same: the existence of alternatives, of more than one possible outcome or theory operating within the same instrument or proceeding.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any specific feature, part, or element of something; the way something appears when viewed from a certain direction or perspective; a partial but significant view or description of something.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Appearance to the eye or the mind; look; view; manner of looking or appearing, as in "the aspect of affairs."
The gap between common and legal meaning is notable. Ordinary usage treats "aspect" as a feature or viewpoint — one element among several in a description. Legal usage is more precisely structural: an aspect is not merely a feature of a thing but an alternative legal possibility built into the instrument itself. A bill with a double aspect does not merely describe two features of a dispute; it presents two rival legal theories, each capable of independently sustaining relief.
Common Confusion
The term double aspect in equity pleading is sometimes confused with pleading in the alternative under modern civil procedure rules. They are historically related but technically distinct. The equitable bill with a double aspect was a specific device of Chancery practice, governed by its own rules about consistency of relief and defenses. Modern Federal Rule 8(d)(2) permits pleading in the alternative without those same constraints. Researchers should not assume that historical commentary on double-aspect bills translates directly to modern alternative pleading doctrine.
Similarly, double aspect in the law of remainders (contingency with a double aspect) has no counterpart in modern property law vocabulary. The concept survives in substance — contingent remainders may still be structured as substitutes — but the phrase itself is archaic.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational trap precisely because it appears unremarkable. A researcher scanning historical equity materials for "double aspect" may not recognize it as a term of art without knowing to look for both the pleading context and the property law context separately. The two usages share a phrase but arise from entirely different bodies of doctrine.
In the Law Mind corpus, ASPECT will appear most frequently in:
— Pre-merger equity pleading materials (pre-1938 in federal practice, earlier in state chancery sources)
— Remainder and future interests treatises, particularly those drawing on Fearne's Essay on Contingent Remainders, which is the consistent citation authority across all five source dictionaries
— 19th-century English common law authorities imported into American practice
Researchers working in post-merger civil procedure will find the double-aspect bill largely extinct as a procedural category, though its conceptual logic survives in Rule 8(d) alternative pleading. Researchers working in estates and future interests should treat the double-aspect contingency as a historical form; modern property scholarship typically describes the same structure without the phrase.
The term ASPECT standing alone — not in a double-aspect phrase — appears in some older pleading texts to mean the moment at which a controversy comes to an issue. Burrill's entry records this usage: "the process of coming to an issue in pleading; the attainment of an issue, or the development of the point in controversy." This meaning is effectively dead in modern sources and is not reflected in the other dictionaries. Researchers encountering ASPECT used this way in older English procedural materials should flag it separately.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in close agreement on the substance, with meaningful variation in depth. Black's (both editions) gives the shortest treatment — "view; object; possibility; implies the existence of alternatives" — and refers to both standard phrases without elaboration. Bouvier and Burrill go further, citing Fearne on Contingent Remainders (p. 373 in Bouvier; p. 373 in Black's; Burrill cites Stephens' Commentaries at 302) and providing the canonical land-to-A-for-life hypothetical to illustrate the substitutive structure of the double-aspect remainder.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law is the only source that addresses the equity pleading usage with specificity, noting the requirement that each aspect entitle the complainant to substantially the same relief and that the same defenses apply — conditions that distinguished the equitable double-aspect bill from mere inconsistent pleading.
Burrill alone preserves the archaic procedural meaning (coming to an issue), which the others ignore entirely. This divergence is historically significant: Burrill's dictionary draws more heavily on English common law antecedents, and this usage may reflect a procedural vocabulary that had already faded by the time Black's and Bouvier's were compiled.
None of the historical sources address ASPECT in administrative law, constitutional law, or modern statutory interpretation, where the word appears frequently in ordinary descriptive usage but not as a term of art.