Definition
An auditor is a person authorized to examine, verify, and report on financial accounts. The term carries distinct meanings depending on context:
1. PUBLIC OFFICER. A government official empowered to examine and pass upon the accounts and vouchers of public officers who have received and expended public money under lawful authority. In many jurisdictions this is an elected or appointed position with independent oversight authority over government finances.
2. COURT-APPOINTED OFFICER. In civil practice, an officer assigned by a court to examine the items of debit and credit between parties in a suit where accounts are in question, state the balance, and report findings to the court. The auditor's role in this context is quasi-judicial: the officer hears evidence, examines witnesses, allows or rejects charges, and prepares a report that forms the basis of the court's ultimate accounting.
3. PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL. In modern commercial and regulatory usage, an independent professional (typically a certified public accountant or firm) who examines an entity's financial statements and records to render an opinion on their accuracy and compliance with applicable accounting standards.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who audits bookkeeping accounts; in many jurisdictions, an elected or appointed public official in charge of public accounts; also, one who attends an academic course without earning credit; one who listens as a member of an audience.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A hearer or listener; a person appointed and authorized to audit or examine an account or accounts, compare charges with vouchers, examine parties and witnesses, allow or reject charges, and state the balance; one who hears judicially, as in an audience court.
The word's Latin root — meaning "one who hears" — survives in the academic sense (auditing a course) and historically in the court-appointed officer sense, where the auditor quite literally held hearings. Modern common usage has largely collapsed the term into its accounting meaning, obscuring the older judicial function that legal sources treat as primary.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
AUDITOR OF ACCOUNTS (PUBLIC). A statutory officer responsible for post-expenditure review of government accounts. Distinct from a comptroller, who may exercise pre-expenditure approval authority, though the two titles overlap in some jurisdictions.
AUDITOR IN CHANCERY / MASTER-AUDITOR. In English practice, an officer of courts of equity tasked with examining accounts referred from the court. Historical sources discuss this role in connection with the action of account and interlocutory judgment of quod computet.
AUDITOR PRO TEMPORE. A temporary auditor appointed for a specific reference or proceeding, without permanent court appointment.
INDEPENDENT AUDITOR. In modern corporate and securities law, an outside auditor not employed by the entity being examined, required by statute or regulation to provide an objective opinion on financial statements.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers face two traps with this term. First, the court-appointed auditor role — central to historical legal sources — has largely disappeared from American civil practice. Modern courts use masters, referees, or special masters for functions the older authorities assigned to auditors. When reading historical procedural materials, particularly those involving the action of account, the auditor described is a court officer, not an accountant. Conflating these roles distorts understanding of historical procedure.
Second, the public-officer meaning varies substantially by jurisdiction and era. Some states retain an elected Auditor of State with broad constitutional authority; others have merged that function into a comptroller or department of finance. Historical state statutes and constitutional provisions must be read in context — an "auditor" in an 1850 Ohio statute is not necessarily performing the same function as an "auditor" in a contemporaneous Massachusetts court reference.
The corpus connection to the action of account is significant. Bouvier's treatment of auditor arises almost entirely in that procedural context, tracking the interlocutory judgment of quod computet and the subsequent reference. Researchers tracing accounting disputes in equity or early common-law practice should treat the auditor entry as an entry point into the broader action-of-account materials.
For modern securities or corporate governance research, historical dictionary sources offer little guidance. The independent auditor as a regulatory construct — shaped by the Securities Exchange Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, and PCAOB standards — postdates all historical dictionary sources and requires parallel regulatory research.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier agree on the two core meanings: the public officer and the court-appointed officer. The definitions are nearly identical across the first and second editions of Black's, reflecting that the term's legal content was stable by the late nineteenth century.
Bouvier's treatment is more procedurally detailed, situating the auditor squarely within the action of account. Bouvier notes that auditors historically lacked authority to examine the parties themselves — a power that developed over time — and addresses the intersection of the auditor's role with the statute of limitations in mutual account cases, where limitations runs from the last item on either side of the account.
Webster's 1913 is useful here because it preserves the etymological "hearer" sense that the legal dictionaries take for granted but do not explain. The judicial-hearing dimension of the court auditor's role is easy to miss in Black's compressed definitions.
None of the historical sources address the modern independent auditor in any regulatory sense. Researchers should not extrapolate historical definitions into contemporary auditing standards.
Jurisdictional Note
The public-officer auditor varies widely. Several states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) maintain a constitutional Auditor of State as a distinct elected office. Others have abolished the position or absorbed its functions into a Department of Finance or Office of the Comptroller. The court-appointed auditor, once common in common-law account actions, has largely been replaced by the federal and state master or referee under modern procedural rules.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Public Accounts; Court-Appointed Officers; Action of Account