Definition
Communications, in law, refers to the transmission of information, messages, or expressions between persons. The term carries distinct legal weight depending on context, and most of its legal significance arises from questions of privilege, admissibility, and regulatory control.
1. Privileged communications. The most doctrinally developed use of the term. Certain communications made within protected relationships — attorney-client, physician-patient, spouse-to-spouse, clergy-penitent — are shielded from compelled disclosure in legal proceedings. The privilege belongs to the protected relationship, not to the act of speaking alone.
2. Marital communications. A specific subset of privileged communications. Confidential statements made between spouses during a valid marriage are protected under the marital communications privilege. Distinguished from the spousal testimonial privilege, which concerns whether one spouse may be compelled to testify against the other at all.
3. Defamation and qualified privilege. In tort law, communications made in certain contexts — discharge of a public or private duty, protection of one's own interests, employer references — attract a qualified privilege that protects the speaker from liability for defamation unless actual malice is shown. The privilege is not absolute; it can be defeated by proof that the speaker acted with malice in fact, not merely ill will but reckless or knowing disregard for truth.
4. Regulatory communications. Under federal and state law, "communications" is a term of art in telecommunications regulation, broadcasting, and electronic surveillance law. The Federal Communications Act and related statutes define and regulate the interception, transmission, and storage of electronic and wire communications.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of communication; the act or acts of conveying information, ideas, or feelings between persons or systems.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of communicating; transmission of information; also, the means of passing from place to place, as roads or channels.
The common meaning — sharing information between people — is not far from the legal baseline, but the gap opens sharply when legal consequence attaches. In law, a "communication" is not merely a transfer of information; it is a legally classified act. Whether a communication is privileged, discoverable, intercepted, published, or regulated depends on who made it, to whom, in what relationship, and by what medium. Researchers who treat "communications" as merely synonymous with "messages" or "statements" will miss the doctrinal freight the term carries.
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Common Confusion
Marital communications privilege vs. spousal testimonial privilege. These are two distinct doctrines that are frequently conflated. The marital communications privilege protects the content of confidential statements made between spouses during marriage and generally survives divorce. The spousal testimonial privilege protects a witness-spouse from being compelled to testify against the defendant-spouse at all and, in federal courts, belongs to the witness spouse rather than the defendant spouse. The two can apply independently or simultaneously in the same proceeding.
Privileged communications vs. confidential communications. Not all confidential communications are privileged. A communication may be confidential in the ordinary sense — the speaker intended it to be private — without attracting legal privilege. Legal privilege requires a recognized protected relationship and, usually, the absence of third parties who would destroy confidentiality.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term "communications" in historical legal sources almost always appears in the context of privilege, and researchers should expect it to operate in that register. When encountered in nineteenth-century treatises and cases, "privileged communications" typically refers to the defamation-qualified-privilege doctrine — the protection extended to statements made in the course of duty — rather than the evidentiary privilege doctrine that modern readers may assume. The two doctrines share vocabulary but arise from different bodies of law and serve different purposes.
Researchers working in evidence and procedure sources should note that marital communications doctrine evolved unevenly across jurisdictions and across time. Early common law recognized no spousal testimonial competency at all; the communications privilege as a discrete doctrine developed later and was often conflated with competency rules in older materials. Sources from before the mid-twentieth century may use "privileged communications" between spouses to describe what modern doctrine separates into two independent privileges.
In telecommunications and electronic surveillance research, "communications" takes on a statutory character tied to specific definitional sections. The Wiretap Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Stored Communications Act each define "communication" with precision, and the distinctions among wire, oral, and electronic communications determine which statutory protections apply. Historical sources will not anticipate this regulatory architecture; researchers should treat pre-statutory common law discussions of communications interception as background context only.
The corpus connection to defamation research is significant. When Rapalje & Lawrence addresses communications in the context of qualified privilege and malice, it reflects the Victorian-era tort treatise tradition in which "privileged communication" was primarily a defamation defense concept. Researchers should follow this thread into contemporary defamation doctrine carefully, as the qualified-privilege framework has been substantially reshaped by constitutional developments since New York Times v. Sullivan.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence address communications in the context of qualified privilege in defamation, following the English treatise tradition exemplified by Shortt on Copyright and the case law in Clark v. Molyneux. Their treatment reflects the standard nineteenth-century framework: certain communications made in the discharge of public or private duty attract a privilege that defeats a defamation claim unless the plaintiff can prove malice in fact. The source does not address the evidentiary or marital communications privileges in the surviving excerpt, which reflects the era's tendency to treat "privileged communications" primarily as a tort concept rather than an evidence concept.
What Rapalje & Lawrence does not cover — and what researchers must supply from other sources — is the evidentiary privilege doctrine as it developed through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the statutory communications frameworks that emerged with telecommunications regulation. The historical dictionaries on the Law Mind shelf are largely silent on the regulatory dimension of the term, which requires consultation of statutory and administrative law sources.
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Jurisdictional Note
Marital communications privilege rules vary significantly by jurisdiction. Federal courts apply a federal common law privilege; state courts apply state-specific rules, some codified in evidence codes and some remaining common law. Some jurisdictions recognize exceptions for crimes against the other spouse or against children; others do not. Researchers should not assume uniformity.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Spousal Privileges — Testimonial Privilege and Marital Communications (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)
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