Definition
In legal usage, "daily" means occurring every day, or in certain contexts, every day in the week with limited exceptions. The term carries two principal applications:
1. General temporal meaning: Occurring each successive day. Used in statutes, contracts, and regulatory instruments to define the frequency of required acts, penalties, filings, or calculations—as in "daily fines," "daily rates," or "daily averages."
2. Publication context: A "daily newspaper" is one published every day or every day except one per week. Courts have construed a newspaper published six days per week as satisfying the "daily" requirement for statutory notice purposes.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): That which occurs every day, or at least every working day.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Happening, or belonging to, each successive day; diurnal—as in "daily labor" or "daily bread."
Editorial note: The common and legal meanings are close but not identical. The legal significance lies in the exceptions courts allow: a publication or act that skips one day per week—typically Sunday—may still qualify as "daily" under statute. A researcher treating "daily" as an absolute (every single calendar day, no exceptions) will misread both the case law and regulatory construction of that term.
Common Confusion
"Daily" is sometimes conflated with "per diem," which carries a specific meaning in compensation, tax, and expense contexts (a fixed allowance calculated by the day). "Daily" in a penalty or accrual clause simply specifies the frequency of calculation; it does not by itself determine the rate or cap. Similarly, researchers should distinguish "daily" from "business day" or "court day" constructions, which exclude weekends and holidays. A statute saying "daily" does not automatically import those exclusions.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap with "daily" is context-dependence: the same word means different things in a publication statute, a penalty clause, an environmental regulation, and a wage-and-hour provision.
Publication statutes: When a statute requires notice in a "daily" newspaper, courts have consistently held that a six-day publication schedule satisfies the requirement. Sunday exclusion is well-established. A researcher working with 19th- or early 20th-century state cases on statutory notice will find that courts applied a popular-sense construction—look for decisions addressing whether a paper's usual custom controlled over its masthead claim.
Penalty and accrual clauses: "Daily" penalties or interest typically accrue on each calendar day, not each business day, unless the instrument specifies otherwise. This distinction matters enormously in calculating damages or default amounts across long periods.
Regulatory usage: In environmental and administrative law, "daily" has acquired technical meanings layered onto the common one. Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) regulations under the Clean Water Act define "daily" with specificity in the regulatory framework. A researcher must track the applicable agency definition, not rely on ordinary meaning.
Corpus navigation: Anderson's Dictionary of Law simply cross-references DAY, signaling that the granular analysis lives under that parent term. Any Law Mind research beginning with "daily" should follow that cross-reference to capture the full doctrinal treatment of temporal intervals in law.
Jurisdictional variation is modest but real in the publication context—some states by statute have defined "daily newspaper" explicitly, mooting the common-law construction.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's converge on the same core proposition: "daily" means every day, but a six-day publication schedule qualifies. Black's 2nd Ed. supplies case support from California, Minnesota, and Missouri, demonstrating that this was a recurring question litigated across jurisdictions in the late 19th century. Bouvier adds the interpretive principle explicitly—the term is to be understood in its "popular sense"—and flags the contrast with weekly, semi-weekly, and tri-weekly publications as the relevant comparison class. Anderson's adds nothing independently, pointing researchers to DAY.
What the historical sources do not address is the regulatory and administrative dimension of "daily" that dominates modern usage in contexts like environmental law. Those sources predate the administrative state's elaboration of the term in penalty, load, and rate calculations.
Jurisdictional Note
Most jurisdictions follow the six-day rule for "daily" publications under statutory notice requirements, but some states have codified explicit definitions of "daily newspaper" that may differ slightly. In environmental and administrative contexts, federal regulatory definitions of "daily" control for federal programs and may preempt or inform state equivalents.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Nonpoint Source Pollution and Total Maximum Daily Loads — The Law Mind Environmental & Energy Law Encyclopedia (environmental_20): Directly relevant for researchers encountering "daily" in Clean Water Act and TMDL contexts, where the term carries a precise regulatory meaning.