Definition
In Scots law, the exchange of one obligation for another, so that the second obligation substitutes entirely for the first and becomes the only subsisting obligation against the debtor. The term is the functional equivalent of novation in English and civilian legal systems. Upon innovation, the original obligation is extinguished; the debtor's liability runs only under the replacement obligation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of introducing something new; a change in customs or practice; something newly created and contrary to established norms.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of innovating; introduction of something new in customs or rites; a change contrary to established customs, manners, or rites.
Editorial note: The gap here is significant and directional. In ordinary English — past and present — innovation carries a positive, forward-looking meaning: novelty, invention, improvement. In Scots legal usage, the term is a precise technical instrument for the substitution of obligations and carries no connotation of novelty in the inventive sense. A researcher encountering "innovation" in a Scottish legal source should not read it as referring to any kind of creative development; it signals a specific transactional event: one obligation dies, another takes its place.
Common Confusion
Innovation and novation are functionally identical concepts. The historical dictionaries treat them as synonyms without qualification. The distinction is purely jurisdictional and terminological: "innovation" is the Scots law usage; "novation" is the term employed in English common law and civilian-influenced systems. Burrill notes that Fleta uses innovatio in the same sense, suggesting the Latin root served both traditions before the terminology diverged across jurisdictions. Researchers should not treat innovation (Scots) and novation (English) as substantively different doctrines when analyzing parallel sources — they describe the same legal operation.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a jurisdictional false friend. A researcher working in any non-Scottish source who encounters "innovation" in its ordinary English sense — meaning novelty or creative change — will find nothing useful in the legal dictionaries. Conversely, a researcher working in Scottish legal materials who reads "innovation" as carrying its modern English meaning will fundamentally misread the document.
The practical research trap: Scottish legal texts from the 18th and 19th centuries use "innovation" in contractual and debt contexts precisely where English sources would use "novation." If you are tracing the discharge of obligations, the substitution of parties, or the extinction of debt instruments in Scottish records, "innovation" is the operative search term. The same search in English common law sources will return nothing doctrinally relevant.
The corpus connection to novation is direct and necessary. Any Law Mind research path that touches Scottish commercial law, debt instruments, or obligational discharge should run parallel searches under both terms. The historical dictionaries uniformly cross-reference the two, and the doctrinal substance is identical.
Note also that Burrill's citation to Fleta (Lib. 2, c. 60, § 12) suggests the concept predates the English/Scots terminological split and has medieval Latin antecedents. This matters for researchers working in ecclesiastical or early common law materials where Latin terminology may appear alongside vernacular glosses.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in near-complete agreement on substance. All define innovation as the exchange of one obligation for another, making the second the sole subsisting obligation against the debtor, and all route the researcher to novation. The wording is closely parallel across Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier — each citing Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland as the authority.
Burrill adds the most texture, noting the appearance of innovatio in Fleta in the same sense and explicitly grounding the term in the Latin civilian tradition. This is useful for researchers tracing doctrinal lineage.
What the historical dictionaries do not do: none of them engage with the modern English meaning of "innovation" at all. This is expected for their era, but it means a researcher relying solely on these sources has no warning that the ordinary English word has since acquired a dominant meaning that could cause misreading. The definitional work of distinguishing legal from common usage must be done by the researcher.
Bouvier's entry appears truncated in available sources — the final sentence is incomplete — but the substance it conveys is consistent with the others.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is operative in Scots law. In English common law jurisdictions, the equivalent doctrine is novation. Researchers should not assume that the absence of "innovation" in English legal sources indicates the absence of the concept — it appears under a different name. In civilian systems (French, Roman-Dutch), variants of novation carry the same doctrinal content.