CINITY - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

CINITYAuthored

The Law Mind • 774 words

Definition

A term of contextual legal meaning used primarily in revenue and licensing statutes to designate a limited geographic area or locality. "Cinity" does not carry a single fixed territorial scope; its meaning is determined by the statutory context in which it appears. In revenue law, it typically denotes a locality more confined than the county or broader administrative region in which goods are bought or manufactured. In internal revenue licensing provisions, it describes the geographic zone within which a licensee is authorized to conduct a particular business, construed in relation to the nature of that business rather than as a synonym for any standard unit of government such as a county, town, or state. In statutes regulating unlawful activities by place — for example, prohibitions on betting conducted in any "house, office, room, or other place" — courts have held that a "cinity" or place of that kind need not be a covered or enclosed structure.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Cinity" does not appear as a standard English word in modern general dictionaries. It is likely a variant or contracted form of "vicinity," meaning a surrounding area or neighborhood.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Vicinity" is defined as the quality or state of being near; a neighboring district; the place or places near or adjacent.

The legal term "cinity" carries a more precise and context-dependent meaning than its apparent common-language root. Where "vicinity" in ordinary speech suggests a loosely bounded surrounding area, "cinity" in statutory interpretation is a term of art whose geographic reach is determined by the specific type of business or activity being regulated — and courts have resisted equating it with any standard administrative division.

Why It Matters in Research

"Cinity" is an uncommon and easily overlooked statutory term that has generated interpretive controversy precisely because it resists fixed definition. Researchers working with nineteenth-century federal revenue statutes or state licensing acts should treat the term as a variable rather than a constant: its geographic scope in any given instrument depends on the subject matter being regulated.

Several research traps are worth flagging. First, the term is sometimes confused with "vicinity" in older index systems, and searches limited to one spelling may miss relevant material. Second, because courts refused to read "cinity" as equivalent to established territorial units like counties or towns, a researcher cannot assume that a licensing provision using the term tracks the boundaries of local government. Third, the rule that a "cinity" used in a place-of-activity statute need not be an enclosed structure is a significant interpretive point for gaming, excise, and nuisance law; a research path that stops at the text of the statute without consulting contemporaneous judicial construction will produce an incomplete picture.

The term is most likely to appear in federal internal revenue acts of the post-Civil War era and in state statutes modeled on them. Researchers working on the history of liquor licensing, tobacco taxation, or gambling regulation should flag it as a potential term of geographic limitation with case-specific content.

Historical Dictionary Support

Anderson's Dictionary of Law provides the primary surviving legal definition of this term, and it is notable for what it does not do: Anderson declines to fix a single territorial meaning, instead offering a series of contextual glosses tied to specific statutory applications. This is itself instructive. The entry signals that by the time Anderson compiled his dictionary, courts had already produced enough conflicting or context-sensitive readings to preclude a clean general definition.

Anderson's treatment identifies three distinct interpretive contexts — revenue acts governing where goods are bought or manufactured, internal revenue licensing provisions, and place-of-activity criminal or quasi-criminal statutes — and gives a different operative meaning for each. No other major legal dictionary of the period (Black's, Bouvier's, Rapalje and Lawrence) appears to have treated "cinity" as a standalone headword, suggesting the term was recognized as sufficiently specialized or contested to require dedicated treatment only in practice-oriented reference works like Anderson's.

The fragment Anderson preserves regarding "house, office, room, or other place" is consistent with the broader interpretive canon, active in nineteenth-century courts, that ejusdem generis and contextual construction should govern ambiguous place-language in penal and regulatory statutes.

Jurisdictional Note

The term appears principally in the context of federal internal revenue legislation and state statutes influenced by federal licensing frameworks. No uniform definition across jurisdictions should be assumed. Courts in different states construed comparable statutory language differently depending on the regulated activity.

CINITYmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

In a revenue act, may mean a locality more limited than the country where goods are bought or manufactured.2 In internal revenue acts, as applied to the place where a licensee may carry on business, construed with reference to the business, but not as an equivalent for county, town or State. In a statute forbidding betting in any "house, office, room, or other place," need not be covered with a roof; an umbrella is such place. A canvas tent may be a disorderly house or place. In a statute forbidding the sale of liquors "in any place" within four hundred feet of a public schoolhouse, held to include a tent, a booth, an excavation in the ground or anything similar thereto.7 Public place. It would be difficult to define what is a "public place" within the meaning of statutes against gaming, affrays, retailing liquor, indecent exposure of person and drunkenness, for notices of sale, etc.; but, generally speaking, it means a place where the public may go uninvited. Not, necessarily, a place devoted exclusively to the uses of the public, but "public" in fact, as distinguished from private; visited by many persons; usually accessible to the neighboring public.8 A public highway is not necessarily a public place: it may be abandoned or traverse a forest." A place where the public has a right to go and be; not every place where people may be congregated.10 For the purpose of setting up notices of sale, a place likely to give information to those interested, and who may probably become bidders. The term is relative; what is a public place for one purpose may not be public for another. 11 See PUBLIC. Compare ALIBI; LOCUS; SITUS; VENUE. 1 Palmer v. Kelleher, 111 Mass. 321-22 (1873), Morton, J. Place of contract. Matters bearing upon the execution, the interpretation, and the validity of a contract, are determined by the law of the place where the contract is made. Matters connected with its performance are regulated by the law prevailing at the place of performance. Matters respecting the remedy, such as the bringing of suits, the admission of evidence, the statute of limitations, depend upon the law of the place where suit is brought.1 The general rules, and their exceptions, are familiar, but the books are full of conflicting illustrations of their application. The primary rule is that the validity of a contract is to be determined by the law of the State where it was made. If valid there, it is deemed valid everywhere, and it will sustain an action in a State whose laws do not permit such a contract. If the contract is not in itself immoral, although expressly prohibited in the State where suit is brought, the courts administering the comity of that State will not refuse to enforce the contract. The principal exception is that the law of the place of performance will govern the mode of performance, because it is presumed that the parties had this law in mind when they entered into the contract; but the presumption may be rebutted by an express declaration to the contrary, or by the fact that the obligation is illegal by the local law.a Place of delivery. In a contract of sale, if no place of delivery is specified, the articles must, in general, be delivered at the place where they were at the time of sale, unless some other place is required by the nature of the article, the usage of the trade, or the previous course of dealing between the parties, or is to be inferred from the circumstances of the case. If a place is prescribed as a part of the contract, the vendee is not bound to accept, nor is the vendor obliged to make, a tender of the goods elsewhere. See SALE. 69, 135; 29 id. 46; 30 id. 19, 524, 532, 550; 31 id. 371; 32 id. 596; 35 id. 390; 37 id. 472; 59 id. 89; 9 Tex. 430; 21 id. 223; 26 id. 145, 204; 43 id. 602; 4 Leigh, 680; 8 id. 741; 6 Gratt. 689; 8 id. 585; 14 id. 679; 22 id. 917; as to exposure of person, 4 Hun, 636; 43 Tex. 346; 3 Car. & Κ. 360; 2 Cox, C. C. 376; 3 id. 248; L. R., 1 C. C. 282; 1 L. & C. 326; 2 Camp. 89; 1 Den. C. C. 338; as to intoxication, 52 Ind. 311, 481; 74 id. 103; 36 N. H. 59; 26 L. J. M. C. 178; as to sales of liquors, 74 Me. 563; 54 Vt. 155; as to public sales of property 71 Me. 547; 48 Mo. 300; 3 Ν. Η. 179; 40 id. 173; 57 Ind. 556; 53 Vt. 447; 44 Wis. 2 Ciiquot's Champagne, 3 Wall. 142 (1865), Swayne, J.; 213. Act 3 March, 1863, § 1. Salt Company v. Wilkinson, 8 Blatch. 33 (1870). 1 Scudder v. Union Nat. Bank, 91 U. S. 412 (1875), Hunt, J. See also Pritchard v. Norton, 106 id. 129-41 • Eastwood v. Miller, L. R., 9 Q. B. 443 (1874); 10 id. (1882), cases; Von Hoffman v. City of Quincy, 4 Wall. 102; L. R., 3 Ex. 137; 12 L. T. 355. • Bows v. Tenwick, L. R., 9 C. P. 343 (1874). • Killman v. State, 2 Tex. Ар. 222 (1877). Commonwealth v. Jones, 142 Mass. 575 (1886). • Parker v. State, 26 Tex. 207 (1862). • Williams v. State, 64 Ind. 555-57 (1878), cases. 10 State v. Welch, 88 Ind. 310 (1882): 52 id. 311. " Cummins v. Little, 16 N. J. E. 53 (1863). See, as to affrays, 22 Ala. 15; 35 

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