INROLLMENT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

INROLLMENTAuthored

The Law Mind • 632 words

Definition

An archaic spelling variant of ENROLLMENT. In its legal sense, inrollment refers to the act of recording or registering a document — particularly a deed, statute, or other legal instrument — by entering it upon an official roll or register maintained by a court or government office. The enrolled record served as the authoritative, permanent version of the instrument.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The recording of a statute or act by placing it on a roll.

Editorial note: The Wiktionary definition captures only one dimension of the legal concept — statutory enrollment — and omits the equally significant use of enrollment in private conveyancing, where deeds required enrollment to be valid against third parties. The common definition also obscures the procedural weight of the act: enrollment was not mere recordkeeping but often a legal prerequisite to the instrument's full legal effect.

Common Confusion

INROLLMENT vs. ENROLLMENT: These are the same term. "Inrollment" is simply an older orthographic form that appears in historical English legal texts and early American sources. Researchers encountering "inrollment" in historical materials should look under ENROLLMENT in modern references. Black's Law Dictionary (both first and second editions) treats INROLLMENT as a direct cross-reference to ENROLLMENT with no independent definition, confirming that no substantive legal distinction exists between the two spellings.

INROLLMENT vs. REGISTRATION vs. RECORDATION: These terms are related but not interchangeable. Registration and recordation are the modern functional equivalents of enrollment for instruments such as deeds and mortgages, but they operate through different statutory frameworks and offices. Enrollment historically referred specifically to entry on a court roll or Chancery roll, whereas modern recording systems are managed by local government offices under state recording acts.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English or early American legal materials will encounter "inrollment" as the standard spelling. Because both editions of Black's cross-reference rather than define the term, the substantive content is located entirely under ENROLLMENT — a navigational point that matters when working through historical indices or digests that may alphabetize and cross-list inconsistently.

The spelling shift from "inrollment" to "enrollment" tracks roughly with broader orthographic standardization in the nineteenth century, but the transition was gradual and uneven across jurisdictions and document types. English Chancery practice, statute rolls, and plea rolls used forms of "inrollment" well into the early modern period. American legal writers, influenced by English precedent, carried the older spelling into the early republic before enrollment became standard.

When researching the Statute of Enrollments (1535), which required that bargains and sales of freehold land be enrolled in a court of record to pass legal title, historical sources will use "inrollment" as the operative term. Researchers should not treat the spelling variation as indicating a different legal concept or a different statute.

Law Mind corpus searches should run both spellings. Full-text searches limited to "enrollment" will miss relevant passages in any source predating the mid-nineteenth century.

Historical Dictionary Support

Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary handle INROLLMENT identically: a bare cross-reference to ENROLLMENT, with no independent discussion. This is itself informative. It confirms that by the time Black's was compiled, the variant spelling had no independent legal significance and was recognized purely as an orthographic artifact.

The historical legal dictionaries do not attempt to trace the spelling's history or flag the research implications of variant forms — a gap that matters for anyone working in primary sources from the English common law tradition or early American practice, where "inrollment" appears with frequency in court records, conveyancing precedents, and statutory texts.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: ENROLLMENT; STATUTE OF ENROLLMENTS; DEEDS AND CONVEYANCING.

INROLLMENTcrossref

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

See ENROLLMENT.

INROLLMENTmain

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

See ENROLLMENT. . INSANE. Unsound in mind; of unsound mind; deranged, disordered, or diseased in mind. Violently deranged; mad. INSANITY. Unsoundness of mind; madness; mental alienation or derangement; a morbid psychic condition resulting froin disorder of the brain, whether arising from malformation or defective organization or morbid processes affecting the brain primarily or diseased states of the general system impiicating it secondarily, which involves the Intellect, the emotions, the will, and the moral sense, or some of these faculties, and which is characterized especially by their non-development, derangement, or perversion, and is manifested, in most forms, by delusions, incapacity to reason or to judge, or by unconIn law, such a want of reason, memory, and intelligence as prevents a@ man from comprehending fhe nature and consequences of his acts or from distinguishing between right and wrong conduct. From both the pathologic and the legal definitions are: to be excluded temporary mental aberrations caused by or accompanying alcoholic or other intoxication and the delirium of fever. See Crosswell v. People, 13 Mich. 427, 87 Am. Dec. 774; Johnson v. Insurance Co., 83 Me. 182, 22 Atl. 107; McNeil v. Relief Ass’n, 40 App. Div. 581, 58 N. Y. Supp. 122; Haile v. Rallroad Co., 60 Fed. 560, 9 C. C. A. 134, 23 L. R. A. 774; Meyers v. Com., 83 Pa. 136; Somers v. Pumphrey, 24 Ind. 245; Frazer v. Frazer, 2 Del. Ch. 263. Other definitions, Insanity is a muanifestation of disease of the brain, characterized by a general or partial derangement of one or more faculties of the mind, and in which, while consciousness is not abolished, mental freedom is perverted, weakened, or destroyed. Hammond, Nervous System, 332. The prolonged departure, without any adequate cause, from the states of feeling and modes of thinking usual] to the: individual in health. Bouvier. By insanity is not meant (in law) a total deprivation of reason, but only an. inability, from defect of perception, memory, and judgment, to do the act in question, [with an intelligent apprehension of its nature and consequences.] So, by a lucid interval is not meant a perfect restoration to reason, but a restoration so far as to be able, beyond doubt, to comprehend and to do the act with such reason, memory, and judgment as to eye 4 a legal act. Wrazer v. Frazer, 2 Del. Synonyms.—Lunacy. Lunacy, at the common law, was a term used to describe the state of one who, by sickness, grief, or other accident, has wholly lost his memory and understanding. Co. Litt. 246b, 247a: Com. v. Haskell, 2 Brewst. (Pa.) 496. It is distinguished from idiocy, an idiot being one who from his birth has had no memory or understanding, while lunacy implies the possession and subsequent loss:of mental powers. Bicknell vy. Spear,. 88 Misc.. Rep. 389, 77 N.

inrollmentnoun

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.

The recording of a statute or act by placing it on a roll.

Explore the full Law Mind legal research platform.

Subscribe Encyclopedia Sign In