Definition
Fear, as a legal term of art, refers to apprehension of harm — a state of mind in which a person dreads impending injury, violence, or punishment. The term operates in two distinct legal contexts:
1. Criminal law (robbery). Fear is a required element of robbery from the person. The victim must experience dread or apprehension of harm at the time the property is taken. Mere surprise or shock does not satisfy this element. Importantly, the requisite fear need not be fear of harm to the victim personally — apprehension of violence to a person in the victim's immediate care or company, such as a child, has historically been held sufficient. Without fear (or force), a felonious taking from the person is larceny, not robbery.
2. Criminal law (circumstantial evidence of guilt). Fear, as manifested through outward and visible emotional behavior — trembling, flight, evasion — has been treated as circumstantial evidence tending to show consciousness of guilt. This use of fear is evidentiary rather than elemental, and its weight depends heavily on context.
3. Immigration law. "Well-founded fear" is a statutory and regulatory term of art governing eligibility for refugee status and asylum. An applicant must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. This is a hybrid objective-subjective standard: the applicant must subjectively fear persecution, and that fear must be objectively reasonable given the circumstances.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Listed primarily as a surname; the ordinary English meaning (an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous) is treated as self-evident and not separately defined.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not define fear as an emotion at this entry — it cross-references an archaic variant meaning "companion" (from Spenser). The primary ordinary English meaning of fear as emotional apprehension is simply assumed.
Editorial note: The gap between common and legal meaning is not one of definition but of function. In ordinary usage, fear is a psychological state. In law, it is transformed into a formal legal element that must be proven, weighed, and distinguished from related states (surprise, alarm, unease). The immigration context adds a further layer: "well-founded fear" is not measured by the subjective intensity of the emotion but by whether a reasonable person in the same circumstances would share it.
Common Confusion
Fear vs. Force (robbery). Robbery can be accomplished by force or by fear — these are alternative means, not cumulative requirements. Researchers working with older robbery cases should watch for jurisdictions that defined the elements differently, some requiring both, others treating fear of future harm as insufficient and demanding only fear of immediate violence.
Fear vs. Intimidation. In some statutory schemes, "intimidation" is used instead of "fear" as the operative term for robbery. The concepts substantially overlap but are not always treated as identical. Intimidation focuses on the conduct of the perpetrator; fear focuses on the mental state of the victim.
Well-founded fear vs. Reasonable fear. In immigration law, "well-founded fear" is a specific term of art with its own body of administrative and judicial interpretation. It should not be conflated with the "reasonable fear" standard used in a separate screening process for withholding of removal for certain individuals with criminal convictions — these are different legal standards with different procedural contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
The term fear has a deceptively simple surface and a layered research problem underneath. Three traps are worth flagging:
First, the robbery context is the term's primary historical legal home, but modern researchers may encounter fear most often in immigration materials. These are almost entirely separate bodies of law. Cross-contamination of doctrine between the two contexts is a real risk when searching broadly.
Second, historical robbery doctrine treated fear with considerable technical precision. Whether the fear was of immediate versus future harm, whether fear of harm to third parties counted, and whether the victim's fear had to be "reasonable" were genuinely contested questions that varied by jurisdiction and era. Older cases and treatises may reflect narrow or now-rejected formulations.
Third, the evidentiary use of fear — as circumstantial evidence of guilt — appears in older criminal law treatises and case reporters but is largely absent from modern legal discourse as a formal category. Researchers in historical criminal procedure or evidence will encounter this usage and should not assume it reflects a modern doctrine.
For immigration researchers, the well-founded fear standard is analyzed extensively in the Law Mind Immigration Encyclopedia entry on asylum. That entry addresses the objective/subjective split, the past persecution presumption, and the regulatory framework in detail.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on a single core definition: fear is apprehension of harm or punishment, with particular application to robbery and to circumstantial evidence of guilt. Black's (both editions) and Burrill are essentially identical on this point. Bouvier adds the most substantive legal content, grounding fear in robbery doctrine and noting the extension to fear for third parties. Anderson's entry is purely a cross-reference list — directing researchers to AFFRAY, DEFENSE, DURESS, INFLUENCE, QUIA TIMET, and ROBBERY — which itself signals how widely the concept ramified through the historical criminal law.
What the historical dictionaries miss entirely is the immigration dimension. Well-founded fear as a statutory standard postdates all five source dictionaries and is not represented in any of them. Researchers using these sources for immigration research will find nothing of use on that question.
Burrill's reference to Burr. Circ. Evid. 476 (Alexander Burrill, A Treatise on the Nature, Principles, and Rules of Circumstantial Evidence) is a legitimate primary source for the evidentiary use of fear in older criminal law.
Jurisdictional Note
In U.S. federal immigration law, well-founded fear is governed by the Immigration and Nationality Act and implementing regulations, with authoritative administrative interpretation by the Board of Immigration Appeals. In state criminal law, the definition of fear as an element of robbery varies: some states codify it explicitly, others leave it to common law development, and a minority use "intimidation" as the operative term in their robbery statutes.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Asylum — Persecution Standard, Past Persecution Presumption, and the Well-Founded Fear Test (Law Mind Immigration Law Encyclopedia)