Definition
A charger des affaires (also rendered chargé des affaires) is a diplomatic officer who heads a diplomatic mission in the absence of, or in place of, a fully accredited ambassador or minister. The term is French and translates literally as "one charged with affairs." In diplomatic practice, a charger des affaires functions as the acting head of a legation when the principal diplomatic representative is absent, recalled, or when a state has not appointed a full ambassador to a particular country. The officer conducts the ordinary business of the mission and represents the sending state in all diplomatic matters during the interim period.
Common Confusion
CHARGER DES AFFAIRES should not be confused with an ambassador or minister plenipotentiary, both of whom hold full accreditation from their government as the permanent head of mission. A charger des affaires is either a temporary substitute for such an officer (chargé d'affaires ad interim) or, in some historical contexts, the permanent head of a lower-ranked diplomatic post where no full minister has been appointed. The distinction carries practical weight in questions of diplomatic precedence and the scope of authority to conclude agreements on behalf of the sending state.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears infrequently in American domestic legal sources but surfaces in questions touching the law of nations, treaty obligations, and the reception of foreign representatives. Researchers working in nineteenth-century materials should note that American practice regarding diplomatic ranks was less formalized than it later became under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), which post-dates the primary historical legal dictionaries. Bouvier's treatment reflects a transitional period in which the law of nations governed diplomatic status largely through custom and comity rather than codified international agreement.
The fragment preserved in Bouvier's source notation — referencing cases such as 4 Conn. 356, 3 Wend. 75, and others — appears in the context of jury charge practice rather than diplomatic law, suggesting the Bouvier's entry for CHARGER DES AFFAIRES may have been physically adjacent to a much longer entry on CHARGE (to a jury) in the original text, and that the source material captured here represents an editorial bleed between entries. Researchers using digitized or excerpted versions of Bouvier's should be alert to this kind of pagination artifact. The cases cited in the source material (Maine, Georgia, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Michigan, South Carolina, and others) concern judicial charging of juries, not diplomatic representatives.
For research into the diplomatic status of foreign representatives in early American federal practice, primary sources such as the correspondence of the State Department and Senate confirmation records will be more instructive than domestic case law. The term appears in international law treatises of the period, including Vattel's Law of Nations and Wheaton's Elements of International Law, both of which Bouvier's drew upon.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole historical legal dictionary source available for this term. The entry is minimal, and the source material as captured is fragmentary and conflated with adjacent content on jury charges — a recognized hazard in working with excerpted historical dictionary text. Bouvier's treats the term briefly as a recognized category of diplomatic agent under the law of nations, consistent with the usage found in contemporary international law treatises. No significant divergence from standard diplomatic usage appears in Bouvier's treatment; the term carried a stable meaning across the relevant period.
The source citations appended to the captured Bouvier's text (cases from Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) do not relate to charger des affaires and should be disregarded for purposes of this entry. They belong to Bouvier's treatment of jury charge doctrine, which immediately preceded or followed this entry in the original text.
Jurisdictional Note
As a term of international law and diplomatic practice rather than domestic statutory law, charger des affaires is not subject to significant jurisdictional variation among American states. Questions about the authority and status of such officers are governed by federal law, the law of nations, and — for modern practice — international agreements to which the United States is a party.