Definition
In Scots law, consequents are implied powers or authorities that follow from a grant of authority by operation of law. Where a person receives a commission or mandate to accomplish a specific task, the law implies that all powers reasonably necessary to carry that task into execution are granted along with it — even if not expressly enumerated. The term captures the legal principle that an express grant of authority carries with it, as consequents, whatever incidental powers are indispensable to its exercise.
The concept is closely allied to the broader doctrine of implied powers: a principal who authorizes an agent to achieve a result cannot reasonably deny the agent the subsidiary means required to reach it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simply the plural of "consequent" — things that follow from or are caused by something else.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A consequent is that which follows from a proposition or condition; a result or conclusion logically or causally flowing from premises.
The ordinary meaning of "consequents" as mere results or effects differs importantly from the technical Scots law usage. In the legal sense, consequents are not simply outcomes — they are legally implied grants of power that attach to a commission by operation of law. A researcher encountering the term in a legal context should not read it as a synonym for "consequences" or "results."
Common Confusion
CONSEQUENTS vs. CONSEQUENCES: These are distinct terms easily conflated. "Consequences" in modern legal usage denotes the effects or legal outcomes flowing from an act or judgment — as in "collateral consequences of conviction." "Consequents" in its technical sense is a Scots law term of art denoting implied incidental powers that accompany a grant of authority. A researcher using full-text search across a historical corpus must account for inconsistent spelling and the editorial drift toward treating both words interchangeably in non-Scottish sources.
Why It Matters in Research
This term has an extremely narrow footprint in Anglo-American legal literature. It is principally a term of Scots law and appears in English-language legal dictionaries largely through transplantation — every major dictionary entry traces back to Lord Kames's Principles of Equity and carries the same illustrative proposition nearly verbatim. Researchers should treat this unanimity as a signal of limited independent development rather than robust doctrine.
Practical search traps: Full-text corpus searches for "consequents" will surface far more hits referencing "consequences" (especially "collateral consequences") than hits carrying the Scots law implied-powers meaning. Historical OCR errors compound this — the terminal "s" in manuscript or early print sources may render the word ambiguous. Context is essential: the implied-powers meaning will appear in agency, mandate, and principal-agent discussions, not in damages or sentencing literature.
The term does not appear to have been adopted as a term of art in English common law, equity practice, or American jurisprudence. Its appearance in Black's and Bouvier's owes more to the encyclopedic ambitions of those dictionaries than to any active use by American courts or practitioners. Researchers working in American legal sources from the nineteenth century onward should treat sightings of the term with caution and verify context carefully before attributing the Scots law meaning.
If the research question involves implied authority, the more productive pathways in the Law Mind corpus run through IMPLIED POWERS, AGENCY, and MANDATE rather than through CONSEQUENTS itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's — are in complete agreement, reproducing the same definition and the same citation to 1 Kames, Equity (page 241 or 242 depending on edition). This near-identical treatment across dictionaries confirms that the term entered the Anglo-American dictionary tradition from a single Scots authority and was not independently developed or litigated in English or American courts.
Burrill's entry is slightly fuller, noting the term in the context of Scots law and gesturing toward related concepts of assent and consent — though the surrounding text in the source material appears to reflect a printing or scanning artifact that runs separate entries together. The substantive content on "consequents" is no richer in Burrill than in Black's or Bouvier's.
None of the dictionaries discuss the term's application in reported cases, its treatment by American courts, or any evolution of the doctrine beyond Lord Kames's original proposition. This absence is itself informative: the term is a dictionary artifact of Scots jurisprudence, preserved in reference works but not actively litigated or developed in American legal practice.
Jurisdictional Note
CONSEQUENTS in the implied-powers sense is a term of Scots law. It has no recognized parallel doctrine under that name in English common law or in American jurisprudence. Researchers working in Scottish legal history or comparative private law may find the concept substantively relevant; researchers in American or English legal sources will encounter the term only in dictionary and treatise contexts.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Scots law implied-powers sense of CONSEQUENTS has no direct encyclopedia match. Researchers whose underlying interest is in modern implied-consequence doctrine should consult:
— Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, criminal_244)
— Guilty Pleas — Voluntariness, Collateral Consequences, and Withdrawal (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, criminal_203)
— Family Law — Immigration Consequences of Marriage and Divorce (The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia, family_203)
Note that these entries address "consequences" in the modern sense, not "consequents" in the Scots law implied-powers sense.