Definition
In Scots law, a technical term describing a legal error committed by an inferior judge who has decided a case contrary to law. When such a judge issues a ruling that departs from established legal principle, he is said to have committed iniquity. The term functions as a term of art in Scots appellate and supervisory procedure, providing the doctrinal basis for correcting or reviewing the erroneous decision of a lower court. It does not imply moral wrongdoing in the ordinary sense but rather a cognizable legal defect in judicial decision-making.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Deviation from what is right; gross injustice, sin, or wickedness; also an act of great injustice or an unconscionable deed.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Absence of, or deviation from, just dealing; want of rectitude or uprightness; gross injustice; unrighteousness; wickedness. Also used to denote a specific iniquitous act or deed of injustice.
The gap is significant. In common usage, iniquity carries strong moral and often religious weight — it suggests wickedness, sin, or profound unfairness. In Scots legal usage, it is a clinical procedural term. A judge who has "committed iniquity" has made a legal error reviewable on appeal; no personal moral condemnation is necessarily implied. Researchers encountering the word in Scottish legal sources must resist the pull of the ordinary moral connotation.
Common Confusion
Iniquity is sometimes read in older legal texts as a synonym for injustice, inequity, or corruption. These overlap in common speech but diverge sharply in Scots practice. Inequity describes unfairness or want of equity in a general jurisprudential sense. Injustice is similarly broad. Iniquity, in the Scots technical sense, is narrower and procedurally specific: it is the label attached to an inferior judge's departure from law, not a general complaint about an unjust outcome. The Latin maxims associated with the term in Black's — particularly iniquum est aliquem rei sui esse judicem (it is wrong for a man to be a judge in his own cause) — use iniquum in its broader moral-equitable sense, which can compound the confusion when both the maxims and the Scots technical term appear in proximity.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Scots legal history or comparative common law will encounter iniquity as a term of art that does not travel well across jurisdictions. It has no recognized equivalent in English, Irish, or American common law practice as a technical procedural label. Its appearance in a source almost always signals a Scots law context; finding it in a non-Scots source warrants scrutiny of whether the author is using it technically or rhetorically.
The three source dictionaries agree precisely on the Scots definition, with all three citing Bell's Dictionary as authority. This uniformity means the term is well-settled within its narrow domain, but the consistency also reflects the term's geographic confinement — the dictionaries are not synthesizing a broader tradition; they are recording a single Scots usage.
Researchers should note that the Latin maxims Black's appends to the iniquity entry — particularly the nemo judex maxim — are general principles of natural justice with wide application in equity and constitutional law. These maxims use the Latin iniquum (unjust, inequitable) in a broader sense that is not coextensive with the Scots technical term. Conflating the two meanings when reading older treatises or annotated reports can produce interpretive error.
The term has essentially no modern American legal application as a technical term. If it appears in contemporary U.S. legal writing, it is almost certainly being used rhetorically to mean gross injustice or wickedness, not as a Scots procedural category.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the primary edition and the Second Edition supplement) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: iniquity is a Scots practice term, applied to an inferior judge's decision made contrary to law, sourced to Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland. No divergence appears across the three sources. This is rare uniformity, and it reflects the term's stable, jurisdiction-specific character rather than any evolution in meaning.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the relationship between the Scots technical usage and the broader natural law tradition that gave rise to the Latin maxims Black's appends. Those maxims predate and operate independently of the Scots procedural term, and the dictionaries treat them as related only by etymological proximity. A researcher looking for the conceptual history connecting iniquity-as-legal-error to the broader equitable principle of acting fairly would need to look beyond these dictionary entries to Scots institutional writers such as Stair, Erskine, or Bell's own extended treatise.
Jurisdictional Note
Iniquity as a technical legal term is confined to Scots law. It does not appear as a term of art in English, Welsh, Irish, or American common law. Researchers working in purely English or American sources will encounter the word only in its common or rhetorical sense, or embedded in Latin maxims.