Definition
Corporeal describes things that have a physical body — that can be seen, touched, and perceived by the senses. In law, the term distinguishes tangible, material things from rights, interests, and other legally recognized objects that exist only in contemplation of law (incorporeal). The distinction operates across property law, civil law systems, and jurisprudence generally.
Corporeal property includes land, buildings, animals, money, goods — any physical thing capable of possession in the most literal sense. Incorporeal property includes easements, servitudes, debts, intellectual property rights, and similar interests that have legal existence but no physical substance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Material; tangible; physical" and "Pertaining to the body; bodily; corporal."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Having a body; consisting of, or pertaining to, a material body or substance; material — opposed to spiritual or immaterial." Webster's itself notes the property law application: "Corporeal property, such as may be seen and handled (as opposed to incorporeal, which cannot be seen or handled, and exists only in contemplation)."
The common meaning tracks the legal meaning closely here, but the legal usage is narrower in one important respect: in ordinary speech, "corporeal" simply means physical or bodily. In law, the term is almost always deployed relationally — its function is to draw a line against incorporeal, and that relational use gives it operational force in classifying property, rights, and interests. A researcher encountering "corporeal" in a legal text should immediately ask: what incorporeal counterpart is being excluded or contrasted?
Common Confusion
Corporeal vs. Corporal: Black's 2nd explicitly flags this distinction. Corporeal means possessing a body — tangible, material, physical (used of things). Corporal means of or relating to the human body (used of persons or punishments). Corporal punishment concerns the body of a person; corporeal hereditaments concern physical property. The two words share a Latin root and are visually similar, causing frequent conflation in older texts and occasional careless usage in modern ones. A legal source using "corporal property" almost certainly means corporeal property; context resolves most ambiguities, but the distinction matters when parsing historical documents precisely.
Why It Matters in Research
The corporeal/incorporeal divide is foundational to property classification across common law and civil law traditions, and researchers will encounter it in sources spanning centuries without the terminology remaining perfectly stable.
In common law property research, the distinction surfaces most prominently in the law of hereditaments — corporeal hereditaments (land and physical things passing by inheritance) versus incorporeal hereditaments (rights in land such as easements, profits à prendre, and advowsons). Historical treatises from Blackstone forward use this framework, and many 19th-century American property sources carry it forward. Researchers working in real property, estates, or conveyancing materials from before the mid-20th century need this vocabulary to navigate the sources correctly.
In civil law research — including Louisiana, Quebec, and sources drawing on Roman law tradition — the res corporales / res incorporales classification is explicitly doctrinal. Anderson's notes that Roman law treated res corporales as objects apprehensible by the senses and res incorporales as objects apprehensible by the mind only. The Louisiana Civil Code preserves this structure, and Black's cites the Louisiana Civil Code directly. Researchers using mixed-jurisdiction or civil law sources will find "corporeal" doing heavier doctrinal work there than in purely common law materials.
The term appears less frequently in contemporary American legal writing, where "tangible" and "intangible" have largely displaced it in statutes, regulations, and modern case law. A search for "corporeal" in a modern legal database will return older materials at much higher rates — treat it as a period marker. When a modern source uses "corporeal," it is often either quoting an older authority, working in a civil law tradition, or making a deliberate philosophical or jurisprudential distinction.
Watch also for incorporeal as the operative term: researchers may find corporeal defined only by contrast, with the incorporeal category (easements, franchises, intellectual rights) receiving more analytical attention in the source. Following the incorporeal entry in any historical dictionary will often yield more substance than the corporeal entry alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries converge on the core meaning without significant divergence: corporeal means having a body, being material, perceptible by the senses — opposed to incorporeal.
Bouvier's is characteristically terse: "that which can be touched and seen; material." Anderson's provides the most analytical content, explicitly grounding the distinction in Roman law (res corporales / res incorporales) and supplying concrete examples of incorporeal things — a right of way, an obligation to pay money, an undivided interest in land. This Roman law framing is useful because it explains why the corporeal/incorporeal distinction appears so frequently in civil law-influenced American jurisdictions. Black's 2nd adds the corporeal/corporal distinction and cites actual authority, though Burrill's entry is truncated in the available text and adds little beyond the Latin root confirmation.
None of the historical dictionaries develop the common law hereditaments framework in depth under this entry — researchers should look to entries for HEREDITAMENT and INCORPOREAL in those same sources for the fuller property law treatment. The historical dictionaries also do not address the displacement of "corporeal" by "tangible" in modern usage, which is a 20th-century development invisible to sources compiled earlier.
Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana and other civil law-influenced jurisdictions use "corporeal" as active statutory vocabulary (the Louisiana Civil Code distinguishes corporeal and incorporeal movables and immovables). In common law jurisdictions, the term persists primarily in historical legal materials and academic writing; modern American statutes and court opinions generally prefer "tangible" and "intangible" as functional equivalents.