Definition
"Declarations" is the plural of declaration, and in legal usage it encompasses several distinct categories depending on context:
1. PLEADING (historical). At common law, the declaration was the plaintiff's principal pleading — the formal written statement of the cause of action that opened a civil suit. In this sense, "declarations" refers to multiple such pleadings filed across cases or counts. This usage is largely obsolete in American practice, replaced by the "complaint" under modern rules.
2. EVIDENTIARY DECLARATIONS. Statements — oral or written — made by a person outside of court, offered as evidence. The law of evidence recognizes certain declarations as exceptions to the hearsay rule precisely because the circumstances of their making supply adequate indicia of reliability. The most common recognized categories include dying declarations, declarations against interest, and declarations concerning pedigree or family history.
3. FORMAL PUBLIC DECLARATIONS. Solemn, authoritative announcements by governmental or legislative bodies. The Declaration of Independence (1776) is the paradigm example; declarations of war and emergency declarations occupy this register in constitutional and administrative law.
4. REAL PROPERTY DECLARATIONS. Recorded instruments — most prominently the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs) in common interest communities — that establish the governing framework for condominium or homeowner association developments. These documents create property rights and obligations binding on all owners within the community.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of declaration — statements or announcements, formal or informal, in which something is declared.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Declarations denotes the act of declaring or announcing; a formal statement or proclamation; also, the plaintiff's first pleading in a common-law action.
The gap between common and legal usage is meaningful in two directions. First, ordinary speakers use "declarations" loosely to mean any announcement or statement. Legal usage is far more precise: each category of legal declaration carries specific formal requirements, different rules of admissibility or enforceability, and distinct consequences. Second, the pleading sense — once the dominant legal meaning — has almost entirely vanished from American practice, creating a false familiarity trap in historical sources.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Dying Declarations: Statements made by a declarant under belief of imminent death, concerning the cause or circumstances of that death. Admissible in most jurisdictions as a hearsay exception.
Declarations Against Interest: Statements that, when made, were against the declarant's pecuniary, proprietary, or penal interest. Admissible when the declarant is unavailable.
Declarations Concerning Pedigree: Statements by deceased persons about family relationships, births, deaths, marriages, and ancestry. Admissible under a recognized hearsay exception when the declarant had personal knowledge of the family.
Declarations of Independence / War: Formal governmental instruments of the highest constitutional and historical significance, not evidentiary or pleading documents.
Property Declarations (CC&Rs): Recorded instruments governing common interest communities, functionally quasi-legislative within their scope.
Why It Matters in Research
The core research hazard with "declarations" is that the word carries radically different legal meaning depending on era, jurisdiction, and doctrinal context. A researcher encountering the term in a 19th-century case report almost certainly faces the pleading sense — the plaintiff's declaration initiating a common-law action. That usage is dead in modern federal and most state practice. Importing that reading into a modern procedural analysis, or vice versa, corrupts both.
In evidence research, the subcategories matter critically. Dying declarations and declarations against interest have overlapping but distinct admissibility requirements; the two are frequently conflated in older sources and in lay summaries. Rule 804 of the Federal Rules of Evidence now governs much of this territory, but the common-law foundations remain live for state jurisdictions that have not fully adopted the federal rules or that interpret their own analogs independently.
In property research, the term "declaration" in a real estate context almost always means the recorded CC&R instrument — a document with the force of a contract and a servitude running with land. Researchers moving between property law sources and evidence sources must consciously reset their frame of reference.
Constitutional researchers should be alert to the distinction between a declaration of war (a formal congressional act with specific legal consequences under international and domestic law) and an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which modern practice has increasingly substituted for formal declarations. Historical sources treat the two as sharply distinct; contemporary practice has blurred the line considerably.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence captures two of the principal legal senses in compact form: the evidentiary sense (dying declarations, declarations against interest, pedigree) and, by reference, the historical association with the Declaration of the United Colonies (July 4, 1776). The entry illustrates the evidentiary categories by example — the dying declaration in homicide cases, the declaration against pecuniary interest in civil litigation — and cites Best on Evidence as authority, reflecting the treatise-based common-law framework that governed this area before codification.
What Rapalje & Lawrence does not fully develop is the pleading sense of "declaration" as the plaintiff's initial common-law pleading, though that usage was contemporary and well-established. Nor does it address the property instrument sense, which is largely a 20th-century development tied to the rise of condominium and planned unit development law. The entry's evidentiary synthesis remains useful for understanding the historical foundations of modern hearsay exceptions, but researchers should not treat it as a current statement of admissibility standards.
Jurisdictional Note
State hearsay exceptions for dying declarations and declarations against interest vary from the federal model in scope and procedural detail. Some states restrict dying declarations to homicide cases (mirroring pre-codification common law); others, like the federal rule, extend them to civil proceedings. Property declarations are creatures of state condominium and homeowners association statutes, which differ substantially across jurisdictions in recording requirements and the scope of enforceable restrictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia: Dying Declaration — Rule 804(b)(2)
The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia: Condominium Creation — Declaration, Bylaws, and State Condominium Acts
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Constitutional War Powers — Declarations of War, AUMFs, and Undeclared Conflicts