Definition
An enlarging statute is a remedial statute that expands or extends the common law — broadening a legal right, remedy, or category beyond what courts would recognize without legislative intervention. Where the common law left a gap, imposed a restriction, or produced a harsh result, an enlarging statute steps in to widen the scope of available relief or legal recognition.
The term is contrasted with a restrictive or restraining statute, which narrows the common law. Both fall within the broader category of remedial legislation, distinguished by the direction of change they work on existing law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Enlarge" means to make larger, to expand in size or scope.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To enlarge" means to increase in quantity or dimensions; to extend; to give greater scope or effect to.
The common meaning tracks the legal meaning closely in a general sense, but the legal usage is precise: an enlarging statute operates on the common law specifically, not on any law in general. A researcher encountering the phrase in historical sources should not read it as describing any statute that increases anything — the term carries the specific technical sense of expanding what courts could do or whom courts could protect under the pre-existing common law framework.
Common Confusion
Enlarging statutes are sometimes loosely conflated with enabling statutes or enabling acts, but these are distinct. An enabling statute grants authority that did not previously exist — often to a government body or official — whereas an enlarging statute expands existing common law rights or remedies for private parties. The confusion is more common in older texts where "enabling" was used imprecisely. Enlarging statutes also overlap conceptually with remedial statutes generally, but not all remedial statutes enlarge — some merely clarify, some cure procedural defects, and some restrict.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older legal literature, treatises, and judicial opinions construing the proper scope of statutory interpretation. It is a term of the common law interpretive tradition, not of modern statutory drafting. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in:
— 18th and 19th century English and American judicial opinions discussing whether a statute derogates from or extends the common law.
— Treatises on statutory construction, where the distinction between enlarging and restraining statutes governed interpretive rules. Courts historically construed statutes in derogation of the common law strictly, while enlarging statutes — being remedial — were construed liberally.
— Any historical source applying the canon of strict construction to statutes in derogation of common law will often implicitly invoke the enlarging/restraining distinction even when it does not use the term explicitly.
The practical research trap: modern statutory interpretation scholarship has largely abandoned this vocabulary. If a researcher is reading a 19th-century opinion that discusses whether a statute should be "strictly" or "liberally" construed, the underlying conceptual framework is almost always this enlarging/restrictive distinction — but the term itself may not appear. Knowing the concept helps reconstruct the interpretive logic even when the label is missing.
This term also matters for understanding how courts historically treated statutes of limitation, statutes expanding the class of persons who could sue, wrongful death acts, and married women's property acts — all of which were paradigmatic enlarging statutes that courts construed liberally as remedial extensions of common law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in full agreement, providing identical one-sentence definitions and citing the same source: Blackstone's Commentaries, Book 1, pages 86–87. This uniform citation reflects how thoroughly the term traces to Blackstone's classification of statutes into those that enlarge, those that restrict, and those that explain the common law.
What the historical dictionaries do not capture: neither entry explains the interpretive consequences of the classification — that enlarging statutes were construed liberally by courts, in contrast to the strict construction applied to statutes derogating from the common law. That downstream rule is essential to understanding why the classification mattered in practice, and researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries will miss it. Burrill's entry is also cluttered with unrelated adjacent entries (ENLOST, ENNOYER), a reminder to read historical dictionary pages in context.
Jurisdictional Note
The enlarging statute concept is a creature of English common law doctrine and was carried into American jurisprudence broadly. It is not jurisdiction-specific in origin, but the extent to which individual American states still apply the strict/liberal construction dichotomy — and thus implicitly invoke this framework — varies. Some states have codified rules of statutory construction that replace or modify the common law canons.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For related discussion of how statutes interact with and modify common law time limits, see: civpro_133: Statutes of Repose vs. Statutes of Limitation (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia). Statutes of limitation and repose are a recurring context in which courts historically applied the enlarging/restrictive framework when determining whether a legislative change to common law time rules should be construed strictly or liberally.