Definition
A single person or entity considered separately from others. In legal usage, the term carries two distinct but related senses:
1. Natural person. Most commonly, "individual" refers to a single human being — a private, natural person as distinguished from a collective entity such as a partnership, corporation, or association. This is the dominant meaning in statutes, regulations, contracts, and constitutional provisions.
2. Legal entity (extended sense). Less commonly but meaningfully, "individual" may extend to artificial or juridical persons — corporations, trusts, and similar constructs — where statutory context demands or permits it. Courts and drafters have recognized that the word is not inherently limited to natural persons, and its scope in any given instrument depends on the defining context of the statute or document in which it appears.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A person considered alone, rather than as belonging to a group; a single physical human being as a legal subject, as opposed to a legal person such as a corporation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not divided, or not to be divided; existing as one entity or distinct being or object; single; one. Pertaining to one only; peculiar to, or characteristic of, a single person or thing.
The common meaning maps closely to legal meaning for natural persons, but the gap emerges precisely where ordinary speakers would not expect it: in law, context can stretch "individual" to cover corporations and other non-human entities. A reader of a contract or statute who assumes "individual" always means a flesh-and-blood person may miss this plasticity entirely.
Common Confusion
"Individual" and "person" are frequently treated as interchangeable, but they are not always synonymous in legal instruments. "Person" is the broader and more established term of art for legal subjects, explicitly defined in most codes and statutes to include corporations, governments, and other entities. "Individual," by contrast, carries a default presumption toward natural persons, which courts may or may not override depending on statutory context. When a statute uses both terms — "individuals and persons" or "individuals, corporations, and associations" — the enumeration signals that "individual" is being used in its narrower, natural-person sense. Researchers should check whether the governing statute or code provides its own definition of "individual" before relying on the general presumption.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "individual" is among the most definition-dependent words in the legal corpus. Its apparent simplicity is a research trap.
First, statutory definitions govern. Federal tax law, immigration law, civil rights statutes, and administrative codes frequently supply their own definitions of "individual." The Internal Revenue Code, for instance, distinguishes individuals (natural persons) from corporations, trusts, and estates as separate taxable entities — making "individual" a classification with real tax consequences. Researchers must always check the definitional section of the governing statute before assuming ordinary meaning applies.
Second, historical sources are thinner than the word's ubiquity suggests. Because "individual" appears so often as a background word rather than a term of art, historical legal dictionaries treat it briefly and inconsistently. The more substantive guidance lives in case law and statutory interpretation, not in dictionary entries.
Third, the natural-person default is rebuttable. The Black's note that artificial persons may fall within "individual" in proper cases is not merely academic — it has appeared in litigation over corporate rights, administrative standing, and treaty application. Researchers working on constitutional questions (particularly equal protection and due process) should be alert to the distinction between "natural individual" and "juridical individual."
Fourth, jurisdictional and international variation matters. In treaty contexts — particularly tax treaties — "individual" has a technical, internationally negotiated meaning that may differ from domestic statutory usage. The OECD Model Tax Convention uses "individual" specifically to mean natural persons, expressly excluding companies and entities. Domestic U.S. treaty implementation may or may not track that usage.
Fifth, for historical corpus research, the adjective form ("individual liability," "individual assets") appears more often in nineteenth-century sources than the noun form as a standalone legal subject. Anderson's treatment reflects this: the word was used primarily as a modifier to distinguish personal from joint or corporate obligations, rather than as an independent noun defining a category of legal actor.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's (2nd Ed.) and Anderson's address the term, though briefly and in ways that complement rather than duplicate each other.
Black's captures the definitional tension directly: "individual" ordinarily denotes a natural person as distinguished from a corporation or association, but "this restrictive signification is not necessarily inherent in the word, and it may, in proper cases, include artificial persons." This is the most practically important point in the historical record, and Black's is correct to flag it without resolving it — the answer depends on context that no general dictionary can supply.
Anderson's approaches the word as an adjective rather than a noun, defining it as pertaining to a single distinct person considered apart from others jointly involved. Its cross-references to liability and partnership signal the practical register in which the word most commonly appeared in nineteenth-century commercial law: carving out personal responsibility from collective obligation.
Neither source engages with the statutory-definition problem that dominates modern usage, which reflects the era: pre-administrative-state law had fewer occasions to define "individual" as a formal category. The modern complexity of the term — particularly in tax, immigration, and civil rights contexts — substantially exceeds what either historical source anticipates.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal statutory and regulatory schemes frequently define "individual" explicitly within their own definitional sections; those definitions control and may vary significantly across different areas of federal law. State law similarly varies, and practitioners or researchers moving between jurisdictions should treat "individual" as a term requiring fresh definitional verification in each legal context.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Alternative Minimum Tax Individuals (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia)
Net Operating Losses Individuals (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia)
Tax Treaties Individual Application (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia)