BOUNDS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BOUNDSAuthored

The Law Mind • 919 words

Definition

Bounds are the fixed lines, landmarks, or limits that define the outer extent of a parcel of land. In land law, bounds mark where one person's property ends and another's begins — whether established by natural features (rivers, ridges), artificial markers (fences, stakes), or surveyed lines. The term is most commonly encountered as the second element of "metes and bounds," the traditional system of describing land by sequential courses and distances running between identified boundary points.

In mining law, bounds carries a related spatial meaning: the lateral extent of a miner's licensed or owned claim beneath the surface. Excavating beyond those subsurface limits — into minerals lying under a neighbor's land — constitutes the trespass historically described as "working out of bounds."

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "bound"; limits or boundaries generally, as in "out of bounds" or "within the bounds of reason."

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Limits or boundary lines; that which limits or restrains; the territory enclosed within limits.

The common meaning is genuinely close to the legal one, but the legal usage is more precise and operationally significant. In ordinary English, "bounds" suggests approximate limits or conceptual constraints. In property law, bounds are legally enforceable, surveyed lines whose exact location can determine ownership, dictate trespass liability, and govern easement rights. The imprecision acceptable in everyday speech has no place in a deed.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Metes and bounds: The dominant system of land description in the original thirteen colonies and most of the eastern United States. "Metes" refers to measured distances and directions; "bounds" refers to the terminal points and boundary features. The two work together — metes trace the lines, bounds anchor them.

Working out of bounds: The mining-law trespass of excavating minerals beneath a neighbor's land by exceeding the lateral limits of one's own mineral rights or mining claim.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with historical deeds, title chains, and colonial land records will encounter "bounds" as a live legal term rather than an archaic one. The metes-and-bounds system was never replaced in much of the eastern United States, so documents from the seventeenth century and documents from last year may use identical drafting conventions. That continuity is useful but can also mislead: what counts as a valid bound has evolved. Natural monuments (a tree, a stream) were once treated as controlling over measured distances; modern surveying practice and some jurisdictions have shifted that hierarchy.

In the mining context, "working out of bounds" appears in English authorities that American treatise writers adopted. Researchers using nineteenth-century American mining law sources should be alert to the English origin of the doctrine and check whether it was adopted wholesale, modified, or displaced by American mining customs and statutes.

Boundary dispute materials in the Law Mind corpus connect bounds to adjacent problems: adverse possession (long-held occupation to a visible bound line), easements (rights that run to or along a boundary), and partition actions (where courts must establish bounds between co-owners). The Rapalje & Lawrence entry flags that English equity courts could be invoked where boundaries had become "confused" — a doctrine of boundary establishment that differs from a simple trespass action and that American courts imported through equity practice.

Terminological trap: in older deeds, "bounds" sometimes appears where a modern drafter would say "boundaries." The words are functionally synonymous in this context, but indexing conventions in historical deed books are inconsistent. Searching only one term may miss relevant instruments.

Historical Dictionary Support

Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary treat "bounds" almost entirely through the mining-law lens — the "working out of bounds" trespass — and say little about the term's broader property-description function. This is a meaningful gap. The more significant legal use of the word is in metes-and-bounds land descriptions, which predate modern mining law by centuries and govern far more transactions. Black's silence on that usage likely reflects an editorial choice to treat the fuller metes-and-bounds system under its own heading rather than under "bounds" alone.

Rapalje & Lawrence is more useful for boundary disputes, sketching the procedural landscape in England: trespass or ejectment for simple cases, equitable relief where boundaries have been confused through long intermixture or loss of markers. The reference to Att.-Gen. v. Fullerton and the cross-reference to "Fences" indicate that English courts treated bounds as part of a cluster of neighbor-law problems — boundary, enclosure, and remedy — rather than in isolation. American courts inherited that clustering, and researchers tracing the doctrinal roots of boundary-dispute equity jurisdiction should follow that thread.

Jurisdictional Note

The metes-and-bounds system predominates in the eastern United States and in states carved from the original colonies. States surveyed under the federal Public Land Survey System (most of the Midwest, South, and West) primarily use township, range, and section descriptions, though metes and bounds remain in use for irregular parcels and exceptions. Mining bounds are governed by a combination of federal mining law, state statute, and — particularly for hard-rock claims on federal land — the General Mining Law of 1872.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Property Descriptions -- Metes and Bounds, Government Survey, Plat Maps, and Ambiguity (Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia)

BOUNDSmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In the English law of mines, the trespass committed by a person who ex- cavates minerals under-ground beyond the boundary of his land is called "working out of bounds."

BOUNDSmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

(147) 81; Att.-Gen. v. Fullerton, 2 Ves. & B. 264. See FENCES. 3. Remedy.-In England, where there is a dispute between two adjoining owners as to the boundary between their lands, the question may, in a simple case, be determined by an action of trespass or recovery of land; but where the boundaries have heen confused, so that it becomes necessary to establish old boundaries, to direct intermingled land to be separated, or an equivalent set out, or the like, the proper remedy is an action in the Chancery Division for a commission to ascertain the boundaries. (Hunt Bound. 205; Wake v. Conyers, 1 Eden 331; 2 White & T. Lead. Cas. 394.) A landlord is also entitled to this remedy if the tenant has confused the boundaries of his own and the demised land. Spike v. Harding, 7 Ch. D. 871. In this case, however, an inquiry in chambers was directed instead of a commission being issued. See PERAMBULATION. 4. Of mine. If a mine owner trespasses on his neighbor's land by excavating beyond the boundary, he may be restrained by injunetion; and for this purpose, in a case of suspected trespass by underground working, the court will, if necessary, allow an inspection; i. e. give the plaintiff leave to go on and into the land of the defendant and see whether he is really working under the plaintiff's land. Hunt Bound. 67. See BARRIER. BOUNDED BY THE STREAM, (in the description of land). 1 Pet. (U. S.) C. С. 64. BOUNDED DOWN THE RIVER, (what passes) Ang. Waterc. 9. (owner's right to fish up and down). 4 Grif. L. Reg. 1286 n. BOUNDED HOWEVER OTHERWISE, (in a deed). 11 Pick. (Mass.) 193. BOUNDED NEAR THE RIVER, (right to waters in front). Ang. Waterc. 6. BOUNDED ON, (lands, in a deed). 4 Wend. (N. Y.) 633. BOUNDED ON A STREET, (in a deed). 10 Mass. 146. (lands conveyed, to constitute dedicacation of street). 1 Hill (N. Y.) 191. BOUNDED ON A WAY, (in a deed). 17 Mass. 296, 413. BOUNDED ON THE RIVER, (in grant of land). 6 Cow. (N. Y.) 546; 5 Wend. (N. Y.) 423. Waterc. 3. (safest boundary for land). Ang. (in waters not navigable, rights of proprietors of land). Burr. 2164. - (owner's right of fishery in waters in front of land). 4 Grif. L. Reg. 1286, 1295 n. (right of owners to protect land from 1 Barn. & Ad. 874. water). BOUNDED ON THE ROAD, (in a deed). 1 McCord (S. C.) 67. only as). 25. Inclosure commissioners. As to the jurisdiction of the inclosure commissioners what). in respect to boundaries, see Stat. 8 and 9 Vict. (ejectment will lie for lands described Burr, 133, 143. (owner may inclose lands, conditions Burr. 465. (proof may be offered as to ownership c. 118; 9 and 10 Vict. c. 70. Their jurisdiction of land, adjoining). 7 Bing. 332. BOUNDED ON THE SEA, (in a deed). 4 Barn. extends not only to land in process of inclosure under the acts, but also to any land which belongs & C. 485. to separate owners, but which is intermixed or inconveniently subdivided. Cooke Incl. 144. BOUNDARIES, (given in a deed, how far controlling). 8 Wend. (N. Y.) 183, 190. (of land, how proved). 2 Wheel. Am. C. L. 489, 494; 14 East 331. (not necessary to state lines). 1 Barn. & Ald. 550; 3 Barn. & C. 870 (on a river). Ang. Waterc. 9. BOUNDARY, (defined). 3 La. 83. (on the sea). 9 Wall. (U. S.) 587. BOUNDARY LINE, (what regarded as). 15 Wend. (N. Y.) 642. 127. (acquiescence in). 12 Wend. (N. Y.) -(fixed by lessee). 9 Wend. (N.Y.) 65. BOUNDED ALONG THE RIVER, (in the description of land). 5 Pet. (U. S.) 485. (middle of river the line of property). 4 Grif. L. Reg. 1291 п.

BOUNDSmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In the English law of mines, the trespass committed by a person who excavates minerals under-ground beyond the boundary of his land is called “working out of bounds.”

boundsnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

plural of bound

boundsverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

third-person singular simple present indicative of bound

Boundsname

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

A surname.

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