Definition
To force out or remove a person from a place, organization, or status, typically through an exercise of authority. The term appears across several distinct legal contexts:
1. Torts / Property: To physically eject or drive a person off premises or out of a location, often with the use or implication of force. The wrongful expulsion of a person from property they are entitled to occupy gives rise to tort liability.
2. Institutional membership: To formally remove a person from membership in a body — a school, legislature, corporation, union, or professional association. Expulsion in this sense is a disciplinary action, distinct from suspension or resignation.
3. Immigration / Public law: To remove a person from a country or jurisdiction, used interchangeably in older sources with deportation or banishment.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To eject; to remove from membership; to deport; to fire a projectile.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To drive or force out from within a contained space; to banish from one's country; to cut off from membership.
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned in their core sense of forced removal, but the legal term carries additional weight depending on context. In tort law, expulsion implies force or wrongful conduct and triggers liability analysis. In institutional law, expulsion is a formal proceeding with procedural requirements — due process concerns attach in public institutions — that ordinary usage does not capture.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Student expulsion: Removal of a student from a school or educational institution, typically following disciplinary proceedings. In public schools, due process protections under the Fourteenth Amendment apply. Distinguished from suspension, which is temporary.
Legislative expulsion: Removal of a member from a legislative body. Most constitutions permit a legislative chamber to expel a member by supermajority vote. This is among the most drastic disciplinary powers a legislature holds over its own members.
Union / organizational expulsion: Removal of a member from a private association, union, or professional body. Subject to the organization's own bylaws and, in some contexts, statutory or common law constraints on arbitrary expulsion.
Why It Matters in Research
The term does not carry a single legal meaning across the corpus. A researcher encountering "expel" must first identify the legal domain — torts, constitutional law, education law, immigration, or association law — because the operative rules differ significantly in each context.
In historical sources, expulsion from property and expulsion from membership are often discussed in adjacent doctrinal territory without clean separation. Black's 2nd Ed. anchors its treatment in the tort context (ejectment, trespass, forcible removal), which may cause a researcher to underread the term when it appears in institutional or constitutional settings.
For constitutional research, the critical evolution is the due process overlay that attached to student expulsion following the mid-twentieth century. Sources predating that development will describe expulsion as a matter of institutional discretion with minimal procedural constraint — a frame that no longer accurately describes public-school or public-university law.
In immigration research, "expel" and "deport" are often used interchangeably in older materials; modern administrative and statutory sources generally standardize on "removal" (in U.S. federal law after the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996), so historical sources using "expel" or "expulsion" in the immigration sense require translation to current terminology.
Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should also watch for the term in legislative records, where expulsion of a member is treated as a constitutional question distinct from other discipline. The procedural and voting requirements are often embedded in constitutional text rather than statute.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's 2nd Ed. defines expel narrowly within the tort framework — ejection, putting out, driving out — and specifically flags the implication of force. The two cases cited (Perry v. Fitzhowe, Smith v. Leo) both concern physical removal from premises, placing the definition squarely in the wrongful ejection tradition.
This framing is appropriate for its era and purpose but incomplete as a general legal definition. Black's 2nd Ed. does not address institutional expulsion, student discipline, or immigration removal under this entry, reflecting a period when those bodies of law were less developed or treated under separate headings.
Webster's 1913 is notably broader, capturing both physical ejection and banishment from a country, and its biblical and literary examples reinforce a sense of expulsion as sovereign or authoritative forced removal. The Webster's usage is historically instructive for reading older legal texts where "expel" may carry a more general "cast out by authority" meaning not confined to tort contexts.
Neither source addresses the procedural dimension of expulsion — the constitutional requirements that later became central to institutional expulsion law — which is the most significant gap between the historical dictionary record and current law.
Jurisdictional Note
Due process requirements for student expulsion vary between public and private institutions: public schools are constitutionally required to provide notice and a hearing; private institutions are generally governed by contract and their own bylaws. Legislative expulsion procedures are determined by each chamber's governing rules and applicable constitutional provisions, which differ across federal and state legislatures.