Definition
A contract by which one party grants to another the temporary use or enjoyment of a thing, or the labor and services of a person, for a stipulated period and in exchange for compensation. Hiring encompasses two principal relationships: (1) the hiring of a thing (locatio rei), in which the owner transfers temporary possession and use of property — other than money — to another, who agrees to return it; and (2) the hiring of services (locatio operis), in which one party engages the labor or industry of another, either directly or through that person's servants, for a defined purpose. In both cases, the arrangement is temporary, compensated, and obligatory as to return or performance. Modern employment law has absorbed and substantially transformed the services branch of hiring, while property law continues to use the term in contexts overlapping with lease and bailment.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "hire" — the act of engaging someone for work or renting something for use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of engaging a person for service, or of taking something for temporary use, in exchange for compensation; also the price paid for such use or service.
The common meaning of "hiring" focuses almost entirely on employment — taking someone on as a worker. The legal meaning is broader and more structural: it encompasses a formal contractual category that includes the temporary transfer of property as well as labor, with specific obligations on both sides. In historical legal usage, hiring a thing and hiring a person were parallel branches of the same contract type, a distinction that common usage has almost entirely collapsed.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Roman and civil law tradition, carried into Anglo-American doctrine through Rapalje & Lawrence and related sources, recognized four subdivisions of the hiring contract:
1. Hiring of a thing (locatio rei): Transfer of temporary use and possession of property for reward. Overlaps substantially with lease and rental in modern usage.
2. Hiring of labor and services (locatio operarum): Engagement of a person's own labor for a defined period or task. The ancestor of the modern employment contract.
3. Hiring of custody (locatio custodiae): Engagement of another to keep or care for a thing bailed to them. Overlaps with the bailment-for-hire doctrine.
4. Hiring for carriage of goods (locatio operis mercium vehendarum): Engagement to transport goods from one place to another. The foundation of common carrier liability.
The latter three are subdivisions of hire of labor and services. In modern American law these categories have largely dissolved into separate doctrinal areas (employment law, bailment, carrier law), but the unifying concept of temporary use for compensation persists.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter two distinct problems with "hiring" in the Law Mind corpus.
First, temporal scope: In sources predating the late nineteenth century, "hiring" functions as a broad contract category covering both property and persons. When reading an older case or treatise that discusses "the law of hiring," do not assume the discussion is limited to employment. It may concern the lease of chattels, the engagement of a carrier, or the custody of bailed goods. The Roman fourfold classification was actively in use in American treatise writing well into the Gilded Age.
Second, the employment-law migration: As labor and employment law developed as an independent field through the twentieth century, "hiring" in modern statutory and regulatory sources almost exclusively means the engagement of workers. Immigration compliance, anti-discrimination statutes, and negligent hiring tort doctrine all use "hiring" in this narrower sense. Searching for "hiring" in modern regulatory materials will not surface the property-use cases that older sources would include under the same heading.
The negligent hiring doctrine — now a significant area of tort liability — is conceptually descended from the hiring-of-services branch but operates under entirely different legal tests. The link between the historical contract category and the modern tort is not always obvious in secondary sources, but the doctrinal thread runs directly from the master-servant relationship embedded in locatio operarum.
For immigration research, "hiring" carries a specific regulatory meaning tied to employment eligibility verification obligations. The civil and criminal penalties for knowingly hiring unauthorized workers attach to a formal act of engagement, not merely to a continuing employment relationship — timing and documentation matter in ways that require close attention to the relevant statutory definitions.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in solid agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and the California and Dakota civil codes quoted therein define hiring as a contract granting either the enjoyment of a thing or the use of labor and services for a time certain in exchange for stipulated compensation. The formulation is consistent across sources.
Rapalje & Lawrence supplies the most analytically useful contribution by preserving the Roman fourfold classification and explicitly noting that three of the four subdivisions are simply branches of hire of labor and services. This is more precise than Black's, which conflates the categories somewhat.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law, as reflected in the available excerpt, does not speak directly to hiring as a contract type; the excerpt addresses possession and statutory limitations in a property context. This gap illustrates a broader point: not every source covers every term with equal depth, and researchers should not assume uniform treatment across the historical shelf.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any sustained treatment of the employment-regulation dimension of hiring — the statutory overlay of labor law, immigration law, and anti-discrimination law that now dominates practical usage of the term. These developments postdate the primary compilation period of all sources on the shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The California Civil Code (§ 1925) and Dakota Civil Code (§ 1103) definitions quoted in Black's reflect the civil law influence on western American codification, where hiring of things and hiring of services were treated as a unified statutory category. Common law jurisdictions developed the same substantive rules through case law rather than code, but the underlying framework is functionally similar. Modern employment-at-will doctrine, which governs the default hiring relationship in most U.S. states, operates largely independently of the classical hiring-contract framework.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Employer Penalties — Criminal and Civil Sanctions for Knowingly Hiring Unauthorized Workers (Law Mind Immigration Law Encyclopedia)
Vicarious Liability and Joint Tort Liability — Negligent Hiring, Retention, and Supervision (Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)