Definition
In amity (Latin: in friendship) is a phrase used in international and public law to describe the relationship between sovereign nations, or between a nation and a recognized group such as an Indigenous tribe, that are at peace with one another and not engaged in open hostilities. Nations or peoples said to be "in amity" with a government share a status of formal or recognized friendship — or at minimum the absence of war — that carries legal consequences for how individuals, vessels, property, and acts connected to those nations are treated under domestic law.
The phrase appears most prominently in two contexts:
1. Relations between foreign sovereigns and the United States, where being "in amity" was a prerequisite for certain protections under federal law and the law of nations — for example, whether acts against a foreign subject triggered criminal liability under statutes protecting friendly foreign nations.
2. Relations between the United States government and Native American tribes, where the question of whether a tribe was "in amity" determined the legal character of its conduct. Acts of violence by a tribe in amity were treated differently from acts of war by a hostile nation, and federal protection statutes often turned on this distinction.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Amity" means friendly or peaceful relations between people or groups. The phrase "in amity" simply means in a state of friendship or goodwill.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Amity — "Friendship, in a general sense, between individuals, societies, or nations; harmony; good will; as, a treaty of amity and commerce."
The gap between common and legal meaning is not in the words themselves but in the legal weight the phrase carried. In law, "in amity" was not merely a description of cordial relations — it was a formal legal status that activated specific rights, duties, and liabilities under treaties, statutes, and the law of nations. The determination of whether a party was or was not "in amity" could be outcome-determinative in criminal prosecutions, treaty claims, and jurisdictional disputes.
Common Confusion
The phrase is sometimes read as requiring genuine diplomatic friendship or a formal treaty. In legal usage, "in amity" could describe any relationship short of declared or recognized hostility — it did not require a treaty of friendship and did not imply alliance. A tribe or nation might be "in amity" simply because no state of war had been formally recognized, even where relations were strained or sporadic violence had occurred.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "in amity" most often in three areas of the Law Mind corpus:
First, in federal criminal statutes and their interpretations from the late eighteenth through nineteenth centuries. Early federal law protecting foreign nationals and their property often conditioned liability on whether the victim's nation was "in amity" with the United States. Tracing how courts defined that status — and when diplomatic circumstances changed it — is essential to understanding prosecutions under those statutes.
Second, in the law of Native American relations. The Bouvier fragment preserved in the source material points directly to a contested and significant legal question: whether a tribe's conduct constituted war (removing it from amity status) or resistance short of war (leaving it within amity protections). Courts and commentators struggled with this line throughout the nineteenth century. A tribe's formal status as "in amity" affected whether federal protective statutes applied to them and whether depredations they committed triggered treaty compensation mechanisms or war powers responses. Researchers should be alert to the fact that "in amity" determinations in this context were often made by executive branch actors — not courts — and were politically charged.
Third, in admiralty and prize law, where the amity status of a flag nation determined whether a captured vessel or cargo received the protections of peace or the treatment of enemy property.
Historical sources, including Bouvier, tend to address "in amity" obliquely — it appears in the course of discussing other doctrines rather than as a standalone entry with a developed definition. Researchers should not assume that the absence of a full treatment in historical dictionaries reflects a minor concept; the phrase was jurisdictionally significant and its application was often disputed.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not provide a full standalone definition of "in amity." The surviving fragment addresses the Native American context directly, noting that a tribe's conduct in resisting the opening of a military road — even if violent — did not necessarily remove it from amity status. This reflects a broader doctrinal tension: federal law extended protections and obligations to tribes "in amity," but the threshold for losing that status through hostilities was contested. Bouvier's treatment suggests that courts and commentators were reluctant to treat defensive or reactive violence as the equivalent of a declaration of war sufficient to terminate amity status.
Other historical dictionaries of the period (Black's early editions, Wharton's Law Lexicon) treat amity primarily in the foreign-nation context and give less attention to its application in Indigenous relations law — a gap that Bouvier partially fills but does not resolve.
Jurisdictional Note
The legal significance of "in amity" was primarily a matter of federal law in the United States, given its connection to foreign relations, treaties, and federal statutes governing Native American affairs. State courts rarely had occasion to apply the concept independently, though early state criminal prosecutions sometimes raised it when foreign subjects were involved.