Definition
In legal usage, dative carries three distinct but related senses, all rooted in the concept of appointment or bestowal by authority rather than by operation of law.
1. Appointed by public authority. An office, executor, or other legal role is dative when it is conferred by a court or magistrate rather than arising automatically by law or by private designation. The clearest surviving example is the Scottish executor-dative: an executor appointed by a court of law to administer a decedent's estate, the functional equivalent of an English administrator. The appointment is an act of public authority, not a product of the decedent's testamentary will.
2. In one's gift; disposable at will. In old English law, dative described an office or privilege held in another's gift — capable of being granted, withheld, or revoked at the pleasure of the grantor. The office exists not by inherent right or perpetual grant but by the continuing favor of the appointing power.
3. Removable; not perpetual. A dative officer is one who holds position at will or during pleasure, as distinguished from an officer holding a perpetual or irremovable office. The term thus captures the precariousness of tenure that follows from appointment by discretionary authority.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In grammar, dative denotes the case of a noun expressing the indirect object of a verb — the recipient or beneficiary of an action, typically indicated in English by to or for.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Noting the case of a noun which expresses the remoter object, generally indicated in English by to or for with the objective; also, in one's gift; capable of being disposed of at will and pleasure.
Editorial note: The grammatical sense of dative — the giving case — is the meaning most modern readers will encounter first. The legal senses are entirely distinct, though they share the same etymological root in the idea of giving or bestowing. A researcher encountering dative in a legal text should not import the grammatical meaning; the legal usage concerns authority of appointment and tenure of office, not grammatical function.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Executor-dative: The principal surviving form in active legal usage, found primarily in Scots law. An executor-dative is appointed by the court (historically the Commissary Court, later the Sheriff Court) when a decedent dies intestate or when no executor-nominate has been confirmed. The executor-dative corresponds to the English administrator and the American administrator appointed by a probate court. The distinction between executor-nominate (appointed by will) and executor-dative (appointed by court) remains operative in Scottish succession practice.
Dative office: A historical English usage describing an office held in the gift of another and subject to removal, as opposed to a perpetual or freehold office. The term appears in Statute 9 Richard II c. 4 and Statute 45 Edward III cc. 9–10, cited by Burrill.
Why It Matters in Research
The principal research trap with dative is jurisdictional displacement: the term is largely obsolete in English and American legal usage but remains alive and technically significant in Scots law. A researcher working in English or American sources from before the nineteenth century may encounter dative in the sense of a removable or gift-held office; a researcher working in Scottish succession documents will encounter executor-dative as a live term of art requiring no translation into historical register.
In historical English sources, dative describing an office signals questions of tenure and removability that were practically significant — a dative officer could be displaced at the pleasure of the appointing authority, while a perpetual officer had something closer to a property interest in the office. This distinction carries consequences for understanding disputes over office-holding, removal, and the nature of the grantor's authority.
Researchers in the Law Mind corpus should note the connection between dative in the Scots law sense and the broader common law treatment of administration of estates. The executor-dative / administrator parallel is frequently noted in historical dictionaries as a point of Anglo-Scottish comparison, and sources dealing with conflict of laws in succession matters will often invoke the distinction.
The civil law background — where dativus distinguished magistrate-given appointments from legally imposed or testamentary ones — surfaces in civilian-influenced American jurisdictions and in treatise literature drawing on Roman law sources. Researchers using Burrill or Bouvier for civilian concepts should read dative against that Roman law substrate.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's converge on the core definition: dative means appointed by public authority, with the executor-dative as the paradigm case. All three cite the Scottish executor-dative and gloss it against the English administrator. Bouvier's entry is the most compressed, essentially tracking Black's with minor variation.
Burrill adds the most historical texture. He identifies the two English statutory sources (9 Richard II c. 4; 45 Edward III cc. 9–10) and expressly develops the old English sense of removability — dative as the opposite of perpetual in the context of office tenure. He also supplies the civil law sense (given by the magistrate, as distinguished from what the law itself casts upon a party), which Black's and Bouvier's do not develop. This civil law sense is important for researchers using Burrill as a gateway to civilian materials.
What the historical dictionaries collectively underweight is the continuing vitality of executor-dative in Scots law. Their treatment is comparative and somewhat retrospective, framing the term largely as a historical or civilian curiosity. Researchers should not take that framing to mean the term is merely archaic; in Scottish practice it remains technically current.
Jurisdictional Note
Executor-dative is a live term of art in Scots law and appears in Scottish succession statutes and court practice. In England and Wales and in American jurisdictions, the concept survives entirely under the label administrator; the term dative itself is not used in modern practice. Researchers crossing between Scottish and English or American sources on estate administration must treat executor-dative and administrator as functional equivalents while remaining alert to procedural differences in confirmation and appointment.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Executors and Administrators (for the executor-dative / administrator parallel and court appointment of personal representatives); Offices and Officers (for the historical English distinction between dative and perpetual offices and questions of tenure and removability).