Definition
COMMISSIONS is the plural of COMMISSION and carries two principal legal meanings that appear across different practice areas.
1. Compensation calculated as a percentage. Commissions are a form of earnings paid to agents, factors, brokers, executors, trustees, receivers, bailees, and others who manage property or conduct transactions on behalf of another. Unlike a flat fee, commissions are calculated proportionally — as a percentage of the amount transacted, received, or expended. The right to commissions may arise from an express contract, an implied obligation to pay quantum meruit for services rendered, or from statute.
2. Governmental and regulatory bodies. In public law and administrative law, "commissions" refers collectively to independent agencies or bodies constituted with regulatory, investigatory, or adjudicatory authority — such as the Federal Election Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or a state public utilities commission. These entities exercise delegated governmental power and typically operate outside the standard executive department structure.
Context determines which meaning applies. In private law and employment settings, commissions almost always refers to percentage-based compensation. In administrative, constitutional, and public law settings, commissions almost always refers to governmental bodies.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of commission — used broadly to mean payments earned as a share of sales or transactions, or to refer to bodies granted authority to perform a function.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Commissions carried both senses already present in 1913: the compensation paid to an agent computed as a percentage, and groups of persons authorized to perform some official duty or investigation.
The gap between common and legal usage is modest but real. In everyday speech, commissions primarily evokes a salesperson's earnings. Legal usage is more expansive: it covers compensation paid to fiduciaries (executors, trustees, receivers) who never "sell" anything in the commercial sense, and it encompasses a distinct body of public law concerning regulatory agencies whose authority derives from legislative delegation, not private contract.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Fiduciary commissions: Compensation allowed to executors, trustees, administrators, guardians, and receivers, typically set or capped by statute or court order rather than private agreement.
Brokerage commissions: Fees earned by real estate brokers, securities brokers, and similar intermediaries, calculated as a percentage of the transaction value. Governed by contract, industry regulation, and in some contexts licensing statutes.
Sales commissions: Compensation paid to employees or independent contractors based on sales volume or revenue generated. Subject to wage and hour law in the employment context, including rules on when commissions are "earned" and what deductions are permissible.
Regulatory commissions: Independent governmental bodies with quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, or quasi-judicial functions. Examples include the Federal Election Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and state-level counterparts.
Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning of commissions creates indexing and retrieval challenges. A search for "commissions" in case law will surface both wage-and-hour disputes about sales compensation and administrative law cases about regulatory agency authority — often with no surface signal distinguishing them. Researchers should use surrounding context terms to filter: "wages," "earned," "draw," or "percentage" point toward compensation; "jurisdiction," "authority," "rulemaking," or an agency name point toward the regulatory sense.
For fiduciary commissions specifically, historical sources use the term where modern practice might say "fees" or "trustee compensation." Probate and trust materials from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries almost uniformly use commissions for what contemporary statutes and drafting guides often call fiduciary fees. Researchers crossing the historical/modern divide should search both terms.
The employment law context carries an additional trap: when commissions are earned matters enormously for wage payment statutes, final paycheck rules, and overtime calculations under the Fair Labor Standards Act and state equivalents. Whether a commission "vests" at contract signing, shipment, or payment received is a live legal question with significant variation across jurisdictions and industries.
In administrative law research, the word commissions appears in two distinct postures: describing the structure or authority of a specific agency (internal commission materials, enabling statutes) and describing the general category of independent regulatory bodies as a constitutional and administrative law concept. These literatures do not always cite each other, so comprehensive research may require working both threads.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary converge on the compensation meaning as the primary legal definition: a reward or allowance to agents, factors, brokers, executors, trustees, and receivers, calculated as a percentage of transactions or amounts handled. All three sources agree that the right to commissions can rest on express contract, implied contract (quantum meruit), or statutory authority — a tripartite framework that remains accurate today.
Bouvier adds the practical note that the right does not exist automatically; it must be grounded in one of these three bases. This is a useful caution that historical sources make explicit where modern sources sometimes assume.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the administrative law meaning — regulatory commissions as governmental bodies. This reflects the era: the modern proliferation of independent federal and state regulatory commissions postdates most of these dictionary editions or was in early formation when they were written. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier or Black's for the administrative sense will find the definition unhelpful.
Jurisdictional Note
Fiduciary commissions are heavily regulated by state statute. Rates, caps, calculation methods, and court approval requirements for executor and trustee commissions vary significantly by state, and historical rates found in nineteenth-century sources may bear no relationship to current law. For regulatory commissions, federal and state systems operate in parallel, and a commission bearing the same name (e.g., a "public service commission") may have substantially different authority depending on jurisdiction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Payroll Deductions, Tips, and Commissions — The Law Mind Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia (compensation and wage law context)
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Radiation Safety — The Law Mind Administrative Law & Government Encyclopedia (regulatory commission structure)
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) — Structure, Authority, and Enforcement — The Law Mind Administrative Law & Government Encyclopedia (regulatory commission authority and enforcement)