BLIND

10 definitions found across Law Mind sources

BLINDAuthored
The Law Mind • 1076 words
Definition
In law, "blind" carries two distinct meanings that operate in separate legal contexts: 1. As a personal status: A person who is deprived of the sense or faculty of sight, whether from birth or by subsequent deprivation. This status is legally significant because it may affect how certain legal instruments — contracts, wills, and attestations — are executed and authenticated, and may trigger specific protective or procedural rules. 2. As a descriptor for arrangements, accounts, or structures: Something intentionally concealed from one party's knowledge or oversight. A "blind trust" is one in which the beneficiary has no knowledge of or control over how assets are managed. A "blind bid" or "blind offer" involves submission without knowledge of competing terms. In this sense, "blind" modifies a legal arrangement to indicate deliberate informational separation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A movable covering for a window to keep out light; a concealed place for observing wildlife; something designed to mislead or conceal a covert purpose or deed. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Destitute of the sense of seeing, either by natural defect or by deprivation; not having the faculty of discernment; unable or unwilling to understand or judge. The ordinary senses — visual covering, camouflage, and concealment — each have legal analogues, but none map cleanly. The personal-status meaning tracks the Webster's definition closely. The structural meaning (blind trust, blind bid) derives from the "concealment" sense but has been formalized into distinct legal instruments with specific rules governing their operation. A researcher seeing "blind" in an older text must assess which sense governs — a party's physical condition or a deliberately opaque arrangement — before the passage makes legal sense.
Common Confusion
"Blind" as a personal status is sometimes conflated with general incapacity. Historically, blindness did not negate legal capacity. Blind persons could and did execute contracts and wills at common law, though procedural accommodations were required. The confusion arises because deafness, blindness, and mental incapacity were sometimes grouped together in older treatises as conditions requiring special procedural treatment. Blindness affects execution mechanics, not underlying legal capacity. Separately, "blind" as a structural descriptor in modern usage (blind trust, blind pool) should not be confused with "anonymous" arrangements. Anonymity concerns identity; blindness concerns knowledge and control. A blind trust is fully identified — the trustee knows who the beneficiary is — but the beneficiary is deliberately kept ignorant of asset management decisions.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Blind Trust: A trust arrangement in which the beneficiary surrenders management control and is denied information about specific investment decisions, used most commonly in public office ethics compliance. Blind Pool: An investment structure in which investors commit capital without knowing in advance what specific assets will be acquired. Blind Bid / Blind Offer: A competitive submission made without knowledge of other parties' terms. Blind Attestation Context: The evidentiary circumstance in which a formerly sighted attesting witness has become blind before testifying, requiring resort to proof of handwriting rather than live recognition testimony.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "blind" in legal texts most often in one of three clusters, and conflating them produces misdirection: First, in probate and wills research, the blindness of a testator or attesting witness triggers specific authentication rules. Bouvier flags a critical procedural point: when an attesting witness becomes blind after execution, their handwriting may be proved as if they were dead — but the witness must first be produced in court if within jurisdiction. This condition appears in older English and American probate cases and requires attention to the procedural posture, not just the substantive capacity question. Second, in modern administrative and ethics law, "blind trust" has acquired a technical regulatory meaning distinct from ordinary trust doctrine. Sources predating the post-Watergate ethics reform era will not reflect the modern compliance-driven usage of the term. Researchers using older treatises or Black's 1st and 2nd editions to understand blind trust obligations in a public ethics context will find those sources silent or insufficiently specific. Third, the Anderson's Dictionary entry in the source material is almost certainly a transcription error or OCR artifact — the passage returned references blasphemy, not blindness. Researchers relying on Anderson's for this term should treat the source as missing rather than authoritative.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the personal-status definition without serious divergence. Black's 1st and 2nd editions both define "blind" simply as one deprived of the sense or faculty of sight, with Black's 2nd adding a citation to the California Political Code. Bouvier provides the most legally useful historical entry, addressing capacity to contract and make wills, the evidentiary treatment of handwriting when a witness goes blind, and the procedural requirement to produce the witness before resorting to handwriting proof. These points align with general common law principles traceable through English decisions cited by Bouvier (Carthew, Barnes, and Leigh reports). What the historical dictionaries largely miss is the structural meaning of "blind" as applied to legal arrangements. This reflects the era of compilation: blind trusts as an ethics compliance tool are a modern phenomenon, and blind-pool investment structures postdate the primary compilation periods for all four sources. Researchers working in those areas must look to modern treatises, regulatory guidance, and specialized encyclopedia treatments rather than these foundational dictionaries. The Black's 1st edition excerpt returned in the source material appears to be an artifact from an adjacent entry ("blended fund"), not a definition of "blind." This is a corpus adjacency issue worth flagging when scanning digitized historical law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Statutory definitions of blindness for purposes of public benefits, tax exemptions, and disability law vary by jurisdiction and often differ from the common law understanding. A person may qualify as "blind" under a state benefits statute at a defined acuity threshold without meeting the complete-deprivation standard reflected in the historical dictionaries. Researchers should not assume the historical common law definition governs statutory contexts.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Legal Capacity (for blindness and contractual/testamentary capacity); Testamentary Capacity (for execution requirements when testator or witness is blind); Competency of Witnesses (for evidentiary treatment of blind witnesses and handwriting proof doctrine).
Related Terms
Blind Trust | Blind Pool | Capacity (Legal) | Testamentary Capacity | Competency of Witnesses | Attestation | Will | Handwriting (Proof of) | Disability | Trust
BLINDmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
forming one aggregate, this is called a "blended fund."
BLINDmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
One who is deprived of the forest against venison, was one of the four sense or faculty of sight.
BLINDmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
The condition of one who is deprived of the faculty of seeing. Persons who are blind may enter into contracts and make wills like others; Carth. 53; Barnes 19, 23; 3 Leigh 32. When an attesting witness becomes blind, his hand- writing may be proved as if he were dead; 1 Starkie, Ev. 341. But before proving his handwriting the witness must be produced, if within the jurisdiction of the court, and examined; 1 Ld. Raym. 734; 1 Mood. & R. 258; 2 id. 262. It is not negligence for a blind man to travel along a highway; 52 N. H. 244. See as to negligence by persons of defective senses, 8 Am. L. Reg. N. S. 513.
BLINDa.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
Destitute of the sense of seeing, either by natural defect or by deprivation; without sight. He that is strucken blind can not forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. Shak. Not having the faculty of discernment; destitute of intellectual light; unable or unwilling to understand or judge; as, authors are blind to their own defects. But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more, That they may stumble on, and deeper fall. Milton. Undiscerning; undiscriminating; inconsiderate. This plan is recommended neither to blind approbation nor to blind reprobation. Jay. Having such a state or condition as a thing would have to a person who is blind; not well marked or easily discernible; hidden; unseen; concealed; as, a blind path; a blind ditch. Involved; intricate; not easily followed or traced. The blind mazes of this tangled wood. Milton. Having no openings for light or passage; as, a blind wall; open only at one end; as, a blind alley; a blind gut. Unintelligible, or not easily intelligible; as, a blind passage in a book; illegible; as, blind writing. Abortive; failing to produce flowers or fruit; as, blind buds; blind flowers. Blind alley, an alley closed at one end; a cul-de-sac. -- Blind axle, an axle which turns but does not communicate motion. Knight. -- Blind beetle, one of the insects apt to fly against people, esp. at night. -- Blind cat (Zoöl.), a species of catfish (Gronias nigrolabris), nearly destitute of eyes, living in caverns in Pennsylvania. -- Blind coal, coal that burns without flame; anthracite coal. Simmonds. -- Blind door, Blind window, an imitation of a door or window, without an opening for passage or light. See Blank door or window, under Blank, a. -- Blind level (Mining), a level or drainage gallery which has a vertical shaft at each end, and acts as an inverted siphon. Knight. -- Blind nettle (Bot.), dead nettle. See Dead nettle, under Dead. -- Blind shell (Gunnery), a shell containing no charge, or one that does not explode. -- Blind side, the side which is most easily assailed; a weak or unguarded side; the side on which one is least able or disposed to see danger. Swift. -- Blind snake (Zoöl.), a small, harmless, burrowing snake, of the family Typhlopidæ, with rudimentary eyes. -- Blind spot (Anat.), the point in the retina of the eye where the optic nerve enters, and which is insensible to light. -- Blind tooling, in bookbinding and leather work, the indented impression of heated tools, without gilding; -- called also blank tooling, and blind blocking. -- Blind wall, a wall without an opening; a blank wall.
BLINDv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To make blind; to deprive of sight or discernment. "To blind the truth and me." Tennyson. A blind guide is certainly a great mischief; but a guide that blinds those whom he should lead is . . . a much greater. South. To deprive partially of vision; to make vision difficult for and painful to; to dazzle. Her beauty all the rest did blind. P. Fletcher. To darken; to obscure to the eye or understanding; to conceal; to deceive. Such darkness blinds the sky. Dryden. The state of the controversy between us he endeavored, with all his art, to blind and confound. Stillingfleet. To cover with a thin coating of sand and fine gravel; as a road newly paved, in order that the joints between the stones may be filled.
BLINDn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
Something to hinder sight or keep out light; a screen; a cover; esp. a hinged screen or shutter for a window; a blinder for a horse. Something to mislead the eye or the understanding, or to conceal some covert deed or design; a subterfuge. A blindage. See Blindage. A halting place. [Obs.] Dryden.
blindnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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A movable covering for a window to keep out light, made of cloth or of narrow slats that can block light or allow it to pass. | A destination sign mounted on a public transport vehicle displaying the route destination, number, name and/or via points, etc. | A place where people can hide in order to observe wildlife. | Something to mislead the eye or the understanding, or to conceal some covert deed or design; a subterfuge, deception. | A blindage. | A hiding place. | The blindside. | No score. | A forced bet: the small blind or the big blind. | A player who is forced to pay such a bet.
blindverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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To make temporarily or permanently blind. | To curse, swear, use foul language | To darken; to obscure to the eye or understanding; to conceal. | To cover with a thin coating of sand and fine gravel, for example a road newly paved, in order that the joints between the stones may be filled.
blindadv
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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Without seeing; unseeingly. | Absolutely, totally. | Without looking at the cards dealt. | As a pastry case only, without any filling.

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