Definition
Concurrence is a multi-context legal term with distinct meanings across criminal law, appellate procedure, civil law, and French/civil law tradition. The unifying thread is the idea of things meeting, coinciding, or being held simultaneously.
1. Criminal law — concurrence of elements. The requirement that the guilty act (actus reus) and the guilty mental state (mens rea) coincide in time. A defendant cannot be convicted if the prohibited act and the required intent did not exist together at the same moment, even if both existed at different points. This temporal and causal linkage is a foundational requirement of criminal liability.
2. Appellate procedure — concurring opinion. A written opinion by a judge who agrees with the outcome reached by the majority but for different reasons, or who wishes to write separately to emphasize, qualify, or limit the majority's reasoning. A concurrence agrees on the result but may refuse to join the majority's legal analysis, which can affect how much precedential weight the opinion carries.
3. French and civil law — equality of rights over the same subject matter. Two or more persons holding equal rights or privileges over the same thing simultaneously, most commonly seen in the context of judgment creditors whose judgments attach at the same time and who therefore stand in equal priority for payment from the proceeds of bound property.
4. Civil law — concurrent actions. Where two or more causes of action arise from the same set of facts and may be brought by the same person, the actions are said to concur. Burrill notes the concept originates in Roman law (concursus) and is expressed in common law through the adjective "concurrent" rather than the noun form.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Agreement; concurring. An instance of simultaneous occurrence.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of concurring; a meeting or coming together; union; conjunction. A meeting of minds; agreement in opinion; union in design or act.
The common meaning of concurrence — agreement, consent, or simultaneous occurrence — partially overlaps with legal usage but obscures the more precise technical meanings. In criminal law, concurrence is not merely about agreement but about a mandatory structural requirement of liability: without temporal coincidence of act and intent, no crime is committed. In appellate usage, a concurring judge agrees on the result but may sharply disagree on the law, making a concurrence closer to partial dissent than to the ordinary sense of "agreement."
Common Confusion
Concurrence is frequently confused with consent or endorsement when encountered in appellate opinions. A concurring opinion is not a full endorsement of the majority's reasoning. Researchers relying on a concurrence as authority for a legal rule should examine carefully whether the concurring judge joined the majority's analysis on that specific point.
In criminal law, concurrence is sometimes conflated with causation. They are distinct requirements: causation asks whether the act produced the result; concurrence asks whether the act and the mental state coincided. Both must be satisfied, but they answer different questions.
Core Elements
In criminal law, concurrence requires:
1. Temporal coincidence — the mens rea must exist at the time the actus reus is committed, not before or after.
2. Causal linkage — the mental state must motivate or accompany the act, not merely precede it. A pre-formed intent that is later executed may satisfy this; an intent formed only after an act is completed does not.
3. Correspondence — the intent must correspond to the specific act prohibited, not to some other act or result.
Why It Matters in Research
The term operates on at least four different tracks, and historical sources treat them unevenly. Older dictionaries — Bouvier, Rapalje, Burrill, both Black's editions in the corpus — focus almost entirely on the French civil law and Roman law senses. A researcher working in criminal law will find almost nothing useful in those entries on the doctrine of concurrence as a criminal liability requirement, which developed more fully in the twentieth century through Anglo-American case law and criminal law scholarship.
The appellate procedure meaning is likewise absent from all historical dictionary sources in this corpus. Concurring opinions as a formal appellate institution existed in the nineteenth century, but the vocabulary around them had not been systematized into dictionary form. Researchers tracing the history of concurring opinions should look to court records and procedural histories rather than legal dictionaries of the period.
For the civil and French law sense, Bouvier and Rapalje are the richest sources, and they are closely aligned. Burrill adds the Roman law genealogy (concursus) and the note that the common law absorbed the concept through the adjective "concurrent" rather than the noun. This is a useful navigational point: common law materials will rarely use "concurrence" to describe concurrent actions; they will use "concurrent jurisdiction," "concurrent causes," or "concurrent remedies" instead.
The French law entry in Black's 2nd Ed. adds concurrence déloyale — roughly, unfair trade competition — a meaning not found in other corpus entries and distinct from all the others. Researchers in early trade-mark or unfair competition history may encounter this term in translated French legal materials and should not confuse it with the civil law or criminal law senses.
Jurisdictional drift is a real trap here. A term that means "equal rights of creditors" in a Louisiana or Quebec source, "temporal coincidence of act and intent" in a criminal law brief, and "a separate judicial opinion" in an appellate court context will appear identical in the text. Index and keyword searches on "concurrence" across a mixed corpus will return material from all four registers without distinction.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources in this corpus are unanimous on one meaning and silent on the rest. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, and Rapalje all define concurrence in the French law sense — equal rights over the same subject matter — with Bouvier and Rapalje adding the practical example of simultaneous judgment creditors. There is no meaningful disagreement among them on this point; they appear to draw from the same French legal dictionary tradition (Bouvier cites Dict. de Jur.).
Burrill diverges by focusing on the Roman law and civil law sense of concurrent actions rather than concurrent rights, and explicitly notes that the common law absorbed the concept indirectly. Burrill also flags that Scottish law uses "concours" rather than concurrence for the same idea — a useful reminder that Anglophone jurisdictions outside England may use different vocabulary for related concepts.
What none of the historical sources address is the criminal law doctrine of concurrence as an elements requirement, or the appellate usage. These are genuine gaps in the historical dictionary record, not variations in terminology.
Jurisdictional Note
The French law and civil law meanings remain most relevant in Louisiana and Quebec, where civil law tradition persists. Common law jurisdictions absorbed the underlying concepts but expressed them through "concurrent" as an adjective rather than "concurrence" as a standalone noun. In federal appellate practice across all U.S. jurisdictions, the concurring opinion usage is universal and unremarkable; the criminal law doctrine of concurrence is similarly universal in American criminal law but may be labeled differently in some jurisdictions' pattern jury instructions or statutory codes.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Criminal Law — Concurrence of Elements (Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Concurrent vs. Consecutive Sentences (Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Concurrent Ownership — Tenancy in Common (Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)