Definition
Fesance (also spelled feasance) refers to the doing or performance of an act, condition, or obligation. The term appears most often as a component of compound legal words rather than standing alone in modern usage: malfeasance (wrongful or unlawful act), misfeasance (improper performance of a lawful act), and nonfeasance (failure to perform a required act). In its standalone form, fesance simply denotes performance or doing — the execution of something required or undertaken.
Common Confusion
Fesance, malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance are frequently conflated or used interchangeably in non-legal writing and, occasionally, in legal pleadings. The distinctions matter: nonfeasance is the omission of an act one was obligated to perform; misfeasance is the negligent or improper execution of a lawful act; malfeasance is the commission of an unlawful act, particularly by a public official or fiduciary. Fesance alone, without a prefix, carries no negative connotation — it is neutral and simply means doing or performance. Researchers encountering "feasance" in older texts should be alert to context, as the term sometimes appears without a prefix where a compound form would be used today.
Why It Matters in Research
Fesance is primarily a root term, and its importance in the Law Mind corpus lies almost entirely in its family of compound derivatives. Researchers working in tort law, public officer liability, or fiduciary duty will encounter malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance constantly, but the unmodified root is rare in modern legal usage. In historical sources — particularly older English and American treatises and pleading manuals — feasance appears more frequently as a standalone term for the performance of a condition or covenant. Researchers reading historical property documents or contract pleadings should recognize it as a neutral performance term, not a term of reproach. The spelling variation between fesance and feasance is common in historical sources and does not signal a difference in meaning. When searching the corpus, run both spellings and consider prefix-stripped searches to surface the full compound family.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence note feasance as a component entry, situating it alongside ecclesiastical Latin terms from Jacob's Law Dictionary — suggesting the entry is included primarily as a root reference rather than as an independently operative legal concept. The historical dictionaries do not develop fesance as a term with its own doctrinal content; it functions in those sources as a definitional anchor for the compound forms. Jacob's dictionary, from which Rapalje & Lawrence draw, reflects the English common law tradition in which pleading required precise characterization of conduct as mal-, mis-, or non-feasance, making clarity about the root's neutral meaning practically important. Modern legal dictionaries largely absorb fesance into the entries for its derivatives, and the standalone entry has become uncommon. Historical sources are more reliable than modern ones for encountering this term unmodified.