IMPRESSION - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

IMPRESSIONAuthored

The Law Mind • 867 words

Definition

IMPRESSION has two distinct legal meanings:

1. Case of first impression. A case presenting a legal question that has not previously been decided by the relevant court or jurisdiction — one without controlling precedent. The court must resolve the issue without guidance from prior decisions on the same point. The phrase is applied most precisely when no court in the jurisdiction has addressed the question, though practitioners sometimes use it more loosely to mean the question is unsettled or that existing precedent is not directly on point.

2. Effect on the mind of a juror. Less commonly, impression refers to the mental effect or influence produced on a juror by evidence or argument — the subjective state of belief or persuasion formed during trial. This usage appears in older evidentiary and jury-instruction contexts and connects to discussions of opinion evidence.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To manipulate a blank key within a lock so as to mark it with the shape of the lock, facilitating creation of a duplicate key.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of impressing or the state of being impressed; the communication of a stamp, mold, style, or character by external force or influence; that which is impressed — a stamp, mark, or indentation.

The gap between common and legal meaning here is structural rather than semantic. The common word "impression" carries an intuitive sense of something being stamped or marked for the first time, and the legal phrase "case of first impression" draws directly on that root sense — the law is being stamped onto new facts for the first time. A researcher encountering the phrase in legal sources should not read it as a colloquial expression but as a term of art with specific procedural and precedential implications.

Common Confusion

Case of first impression is sometimes used imprecisely to mean merely that the legal question is difficult, unsettled, or that existing precedent is distinguishable. The stricter legal meaning requires that no prior decision in the jurisdiction has addressed the precise question. A researcher should not assume that a court's characterization of a case as one of first impression forecloses the existence of persuasive authority from other jurisdictions — it means only that binding precedent is absent, not that the question is entirely unexplored in the law.

Why It Matters in Research

The phrase "case of first impression" is a signal term in judicial opinions. When a court uses it, the researcher should expect the opinion to function as foundational precedent on that point — it will be cited heavily going forward. Identifying these cases in the Law Mind corpus is particularly valuable because they represent moments where courts constructed doctrine from first principles rather than applying settled law.

Historically, the phrase appears with slight variation. Older sources and opinions sometimes write "case of the first impression" (with the definite article), while modern usage more commonly drops the article to "case of first impression." Both forms mean the same thing; treat them as equivalent when searching historical sources.

The second meaning — impression as the mental effect on a juror — appears primarily in older treatise and jury-charge literature and is largely obsolete as a standalone term. Researchers encountering it in nineteenth-century sources should connect it to contemporary discussions of opinion evidence, juror competency, and the distinction between fact and inference.

Rapalje & Lawrence redirects the entry to "prime impression," a variant form worth noting when searching historical indexes. The misdirected entry on primage in that source is a transcription anomaly and can be disregarded.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries are in agreement on the primary meaning. Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Anderson's all define impression principally through the phrase "case of first impression," and all frame it consistently: a case without precedent, presenting a new question not yet determined. There is no meaningful divergence among them on this core definition.

Anderson's is the only source to explicitly record the secondary meaning — the effect produced on the mind of a juror — which suggests this usage, while recognized, was not considered a primary legal sense even in the nineteenth century. Its inclusion in Anderson's under cross-reference to "opinion" confirms it was treated as subordinate to the evidentiary concept of opinion rather than as an independent legal term.

Black's 2nd edition adds a partial phrase referencing "claims of another founded on prescription," which appears to be a fragment from a neighboring entry carried over in transcription and does not reflect a distinct meaning of impression itself.

None of the historical dictionaries address the jurisdictional dimension of the phrase — specifically, that whether a case is one of first impression depends on which court's precedents are binding. This gap matters for historical research because older opinions often did not distinguish carefully between the absence of domestic precedent and the absence of any precedent anywhere.

IMPRESSIONmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A "case of the first im- pression" is one without a precedent; one presenting a wholly new state of facts; one involving a question never before deter- mined.

IMPRESSIONmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

the claims of another founded on prescription. A “case of the first impression” is one without a precedent; one presenting a wholly new state of facts; one involving a question never before determined.

IMPRESSIONmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

- See PRIME IMPRES

IMPRESSIONn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The act of impressing, or the state of being impressed; the communication of a stamp, mold, style, or character, by external force or by influence. That which is impressed; stamp; mark; indentation; sensible result of an influence exerted from without. The stamp and clear impression of good sense. Cowper. To shelter us from impressions of weather, we must spin, we must weave, we must build. Barrow. That which impresses, or exercises an effect, action, or agency; appearance; phenomenon. [Obs.] Portentous blaze of comets and impressions in the air. Milton. A fiery impression falling from out of Heaven. Holland. Influence or effect on the senses or the intellect hence, interest, concern. Reid. His words impression left. Milton. Such terrible impression made the dream. Shak. I have a father's dear impression, And wish, before I fall into my grave, That I might see her married. Ford. An indistinct notion, remembrance, or belief. Impressiveness; emphasis of delivery. Which must be read with an impression. Milton. The pressure of the type on the paper, or the result of such pressure, as regards its appearance; as, a heavy impression; a clear, or a poor, impression; also, a single copy as the result of printing, or the whole edition printed at a given time. Ten impressions which his books have had. Dryden. In painting, the first coat of color, as the priming in house painting and the like. [R.] A print on paper from a wood block, metal plate, or the like. Proof impression, one of the early impressions taken from an engraving, before the plate or block is worn.

impressionverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

To manipulate a blank key within a lock so as to mark it with impressions of the shape of the lock, which facilitates creation of a duplicate key.

impressionnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

The indentation or depression made by the pressure of one object on or into another. | The overall effect of something, e.g., on a person. | A vague recalling of an event, a belief. | An impersonation, an imitation of the mannerisms of another individual. | An outward appearance. | A performance metric representing an instance where a post or ad is shown once. | The first coat of colour, such as the priming in house-painting etc. | A print on paper from a wood block, metal plate, etc. | The vivid perception of something as it is experienced, in contrast to ideas or thoughts drawn from memory or the imagination. | set of copies of a publication printed at one time having the same content, layout, pagination, etc.

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