Definition
Scholars who have received a degree from a college or university. In legal contexts, the term appears primarily in statutes, charters, and institutional regulations governing academic bodies, professional licensing, and the rights or privileges conferred upon persons holding academic degrees. The term carries no independent substantive legal meaning apart from its descriptive function in such instruments.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of graduate; persons who have completed a course of study and received a degree or diploma.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Persons who have received an academic degree; also used as a verb form denoting the act of conferring or receiving such a degree.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrow. Legal usage tracks ordinary meaning closely, treating "graduates" as a purely descriptive class. The distinction worth noting is that legal instruments often attach specific consequences to membership in this class — eligibility for professional licensure, bar admission, guild membership, or ecclesiastical office — that the common usage does not carry.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "graduates" rarely functions as a legal term of art in its own right. Its significance in legal research is almost always derivative: the word marks a qualifying class in a statute, charter, or regulation, and the researcher's real question is what rights, duties, or eligibility flow from membership in that class.
Several research traps apply:
First, historical usage is narrower than modern usage. In older English legal sources, "graduates" often referred specifically to holders of degrees from Oxford or Cambridge, institutions then carrying formal legal privileges. A statute referencing "graduates" in a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century English context may not encompass degrees from other institutions, foreign universities, or later-established colleges without express extension.
Second, professional licensing statutes use "graduates" as a threshold term, but the definition of qualifying graduation is typically controlled by administrative rule or board interpretation, not by the word itself. Researchers tracing licensing eligibility disputes should look past the statute to the regulatory definition of "accredited" or "approved" institution — the real gatekeeping work happens there.
Third, in tax law and related contexts, "graduated" appears as an adjective modifying rate structures (graduated income tax, graduated estate tax), which is a distinct and unrelated usage. Do not conflate "graduates" (persons holding degrees) with "graduated" (structured in increasing increments). The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia treats the latter under its own entries.
Fourth, in ecclesiastical and canon law materials within the corpus, "graduates" carried formal status implications for ordination, benefice eligibility, and church office. Researchers working in pre-modern ecclesiastical sources should be alert to this institutional meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence offer identical and minimal treatment: "Scholars who have taken a degree in a college or university." Neither source elaborates on legal consequences, historical variation, or jurisdictional context. The brevity is itself informative — the term was not considered a term of art requiring extended definition, but rather a straightforward descriptive label.
Rapalje & Lawrence appends related Latin terms (GRADUS, GRADUS PARENTELÆ) that illuminate the etymological neighborhood: gradus meaning step, degree, or generation, and gradus parentelae meaning a table of relationship or pedigree. These entries confirm that the underlying concept of degree — whether academic, relational, or hierarchical — shares a common root, but they do not extend the legal meaning of "graduates" itself.
What the historical dictionaries miss: neither source addresses how "graduates" functions in professional licensing frameworks, tax law, or the administrative law context where most modern legal disputes about the term arise.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For the distinct "graduated" usage in tax law — graduated rate structures and progressive taxation — see:
Tax Rates Graduated Rate Structure (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia, entries tax_190 and tax_73)