Definition
The drawer is the party who creates and signs a bill of exchange or draft, thereby instructing a second party (the drawee) to pay a specified sum to a third party (the payee) or to the bearer of the instrument. The drawer originates the instrument and, by signing it, makes a conditional promise to pay: if the drawee fails to accept or honor the instrument, the drawer is liable to the holder, provided the holder has given proper notice of dishonor.
In modern commercial practice, the concept extends to checks. When a person writes a check, they are the drawer; the bank on which the check is drawn is the drawee. The drawer's liability is secondary — it activates only when the drawee fails to pay and the holder complies with notice requirements.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An open-topped box that slides in and out of a cabinet, used for storing clothing or other articles.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who draws liquor for guests; a waiter in a taproom. Also one who delineates or depicts. A sliding receptacle in a case, opened by pulling outward.
The legal meaning of drawer shares nothing functional with the furniture or serving meanings. A researcher encountering drawer in a commercial law document should not expect any overlap with common usage. The legal term is entirely a term of art drawn from the mechanics of negotiable instruments.
Common Confusion
Drawer and drawee are routinely confused. The drawer creates the instrument and gives the order to pay. The drawee is the party to whom the order is directed — typically a bank — and who is expected to honor it. A maker, by contrast, is the party who signs and issues a promissory note, which is a promise to pay rather than an order to pay. Drawer = order giver; drawee = order recipient; maker = promissor on a note. Conflating drawer and maker is particularly common when reading older authorities that used the terms loosely.
Core Elements
For a party to be a drawer, three conditions are generally present:
1. The instrument is a bill of exchange, draft, or check — not a promissory note. Drawers exist only on order instruments.
2. The drawer has signed the instrument, directing the drawee to pay.
3. The drawer's liability is conditional on presentment, dishonor, and (in most historical and modern frameworks) timely notice to the drawer.
Why It Matters in Research
The drawer's role is foundational to understanding liability chains in negotiable instruments litigation, and the term appears throughout commercial law sources in ways that require careful attention to period and context.
Several research traps are worth noting:
Historical sources — including Burrill — treat the bill of exchange as the paradigm instrument, often without separately addressing checks. Researchers working on check-related disputes must bridge from bill-of-exchange doctrine to the modern checking system. The concepts are continuous but the vocabulary shifts around the mid-nineteenth century as checks became commercially dominant.
Drawer liability rules, particularly around notice of dishonor, varied in historical practice and generated significant litigation. Older cases and treatises may reflect stricter presentment requirements than modern UCC Article 3, which substantially relaxed notice requirements for certain drawers. A researcher reading pre-UCC cases on drawer liability should not assume those rules survive into modern practice.
Jurisdictional case citations in Black's 2nd Ed. — Stevenson v. Walton and Winnebago County State Bank v. Hustel — are useful anchors for early American doctrine but reflect common law frameworks predating uniform negotiable instruments legislation.
The term trassans, noted in Burrill with the Latin law citation, signals the civil law pedigree of bill of exchange doctrine. Researchers working with early civilian or mixed-jurisdiction sources may encounter this form.
The distinction between drawer and maker matters enormously in litigation: a holder's procedural obligations differ depending on which instrument type is at issue. Mislabeling the instrument type in a complaint or brief was a recognized defect in older pleading.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: the drawer is the party who makes or draws the bill of exchange and directs the drawee to pay. The convergence across Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill signals that this definition was stable and uncontested in the Anglo-American tradition.
Burrill adds value by noting the Latin law equivalent trassans and citing Story on Bills and Kent's Commentaries, grounding the term in the foundational treatise literature. This is useful when tracing the doctrinal lineage.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any treatment of the drawer's liability mechanics — the conditions of presentment, dishonor, and notice that determine when the drawer must pay. These procedural requirements, which were the subject of extensive litigation, are left entirely to case law and treatise discussion. Researchers should not treat dictionary definitions of drawer as a guide to the drawer's liability exposure.
Black's 2nd Ed. adds case citations absent from the 1st edition, a useful upgrade for researchers looking for early American authority.
Jurisdictional Note
Under UCC Article 3 (adopted in some form across all U.S. jurisdictions), the drawer's liability on a draft or check is governed by § 3-414. The UCC's treatment is largely consistent across states, but pre-UCC case law — particularly on notice of dishonor — varies and may remain relevant in disputes governed by older instruments or in jurisdictions that adopted the Uniform Negotiable Instruments Law before the UCC.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Negotiable Instruments — Liability of Parties (Maker, Drawer, Indorser, Acceptor), The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia (contracts_155)