Definition
Goods, merchandise, or commodities sent from one country to another for commercial or other purposes. In constitutional law, "exports" carries a precise meaning tied to the Export Clause (Art. I, § 9, cl. 5), which prohibits Congress from laying any tax or duty on articles exported from any state. Under that framework, the term refers specifically to goods moving in the course of exportation to a foreign country — not merely goods in transit between states.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The word "exports" appears in everyday English as the third-person singular verb form of "to export" (she exports goods) or as a noun describing goods sent abroad. The commercial sense is widely understood.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Commodities conveyed from one country or state to another in the way of commerce. Webster's 1913 treated interstate movement as potentially within the word's scope.
The legal gap matters here: The constitutional definition of "exports" is narrower than the ordinary commercial meaning. Goods moving from state to state — even across a border — do not qualify as "exports" under Art. I. The constitutional immunity from federal taxation attaches only to articles destined for foreign countries and sufficiently committed to that journey. Researchers must not import the broader commercial meaning when analyzing Export Clause questions.
Core Elements
The constitutional meaning of "exports" has been shaped around three practical questions:
1. Destination: The goods must be destined for a foreign country, not merely another state or territory.
2. Commitment to exportation: The goods must have entered the export stream — mere intent to export is insufficient; physical commitment to the process is required.
3. Taxability: The Export Clause bars federal taxes or duties on exports; it does not bar all regulation. The line between a prohibited tax and a permissible regulatory fee is a recurring research issue.
Why It Matters in Research
The constitutional dimension is the primary research trap. Bouvier's note — that "exports" as used in the Constitution does not include articles transported from one state into another — reflects a line of nineteenth-century case law that researchers must track carefully. Pre-Civil War sources sometimes used "exports" loosely to cover interstate commerce, and that usage will mislead anyone working on Export Clause questions.
A second research trap involves the modern regulatory framework, which has layered multiple federal regimes on top of the constitutional baseline. The Export Administration Regulations (EAR), administered by the Bureau of Industry and Security, and the sanctions programs administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) each define "export" for their own purposes — and those definitions do not map cleanly onto the constitutional term. An "export" under the EAR can include the transmission of technical data to a foreign national on U.S. soil (deemed export), a concept with no analog in nineteenth-century doctrine.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should also note that "exports" appears in tax law, trade law, and sanctions law in ways that are functionally independent of one another. An article exempt from federal taxation under the Export Clause may still be subject to export licensing requirements under the EAR.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treatment is spare but precise: merchandise sent from one country to another, with the critical constitutional gloss that interstate transport falls outside the term as used in Art. I. The citation to the Nevada Reports (7 Nev. 142) points to state-court engagement with the federal constitutional question, reflecting how broadly the Export Clause issue traveled in the nineteenth century.
Rapalje & Lawrence does not provide a usable entry for "exports" — the relevant page in the source material contains garbled text spanning unrelated entries (EXPECTATION, EXPERTS, EXPEDIMENT), with no substantive treatment of exports. Researchers should not rely on Rapalje & Lawrence for this term.
Both sources predate the modern regulatory state entirely. Neither addresses export licensing, dual-use goods, deemed exports, or sanctions compliance — the contexts in which "exports" most frequently arises in contemporary legal practice. The historical dictionaries are useful for constitutional and common-law grounding only.
Jurisdictional Note
The Export Clause is a federal constitutional provision and applies uniformly. State law does not independently define "exports" for constitutional purposes. However, state tax and regulatory schemes occasionally use the term with their own definitions, and researchers should verify which definitional framework governs the source they are analyzing.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
International — Sanctions and Export Controls (OFAC, EAR), Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia