INSTANCE

9 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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INSTANCEAuthored
The Law Mind • 1094 words
Definition
INSTANCE carries distinct meanings across legal contexts, none of which maps cleanly onto ordinary English usage. 1. Solicitation or urgent request. In pleading and practice, instance means a pressing or earnest solicitation. The phrase "at the special instance and request of" appears in pleadings and instruments to establish that a party acted upon the urging of another — language with significance for implied contract and agency claims. 2. A judicial proceeding or demand (civil and French law). In the civil law tradition, instance is a general term for all forms of judicial action or legal demand. It encompasses the full proceeding from its initiation to its conclusion. 3. Causes of instance (ecclesiastical and admiralty law). In ecclesiastical courts and the English admiralty, a cause of instance is one prosecuted at the suit of a private party — as opposed to a cause of office, which the court initiates in its own name or in the name of the judge. The distinction determines procedure, the applicable rules of standing, and who bears the burden of pursuing the matter. 4. First instance. A court of first instance is the tribunal with original jurisdiction over a matter — the court that hears it first, before any appeal. "In the first instance" means at the earliest opportunity, before further proceedings intervene. 5. An example or illustrative case. The colloquial legal usage — "for instance" or "in this instance" — means a particular case or occurrence. This is the weakest technical sense and overlaps with ordinary English.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A case offered as an example or precedent; a specific occurrence or single case within a larger series. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; solicitation. Also: occasion, order of occurrence, motive. Webster's 1913 preserves the older core meaning — urgency and solicitation — that modern common usage has almost entirely shed. Legal texts, particularly older pleading forms and ecclesiastical authorities, use instance in the solicitation sense that readers today may misread as merely meaning "example" or "case." The gap is consequential: "at the special instance and request" is not decorative — it is operative language.
Common Confusion
Two meanings of instance are routinely conflated in historical legal sources: the solicitation sense (instance as urgent request) and the exemplification sense (instance as an illustrative case). A reader encountering "instance" in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinion or pleading must determine which meaning applies from context. Misreading the solicitation sense as merely "example" strips the phrase of its operative legal weight. Additionally, cause of instance (a privately prosecuted action) is distinct from cause of office (an ex officio proceeding); the two are contrasted, not synonymous, in ecclesiastical and admiralty practice.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Cause of instance: A proceeding in ecclesiastical or admiralty court initiated and pursued at the suit of a private party. Contrasted with cause of office. Court of first instance: A court exercising original jurisdiction, as distinguished from an appellate court. Special instance and request: Standard pleading phrase establishing that a party acted at the particular urging of another — relevant to implied contract, indemnity, and agency contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century case law, pleadings, or ecclesiastical and admiralty materials will encounter instance in the solicitation sense far more often than modern readers expect. The phrase "at the special instance and request" is a term of art in implied contract doctrine and should not be glossed over as mere rhetorical filler. In admiralty research, the cause of instance / cause of office distinction defines the structural division of the English High Court of Admiralty's jurisdiction. The Instance Court and the Prize Court operated under different rules, and conflating their records or precedents produces research errors. For comparative and civil law research, instance as a general term for judicial proceedings connects to French and Scots law usage — where insistence in a suit (Scots law) means the right to press a claim — and to civilian procedural concepts that do not translate directly into common law categories. The "first instance" formula remains active in modern legal writing and in international and EU legal contexts, where courts of first instance are formally denominated as such. Researchers navigating international tribunal structures will encounter this usage routinely.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core architecture: instance carries (1) the solicitation/urgency sense in common law pleading, (2) the general judicial proceeding sense in civil law, and (3) the cause of instance sense in ecclesiastical and admiralty courts. Burrill traces the Latin root — instantia, from instare, to press or urge — which anchors both the solicitation meaning and its appearance in the Digest. Bouvier and Black's (1st ed.) both cite Digest 44.7.58 for the civil law sense. Anderson adds the practical procedural note that applications to set aside proceedings for irregularity must be made "in the first instance" — capturing the temporal meaning. What the historical dictionaries understate is how completely the solicitation sense has faded from ordinary English, creating a comprehension trap for modern researchers encountering older materials. None of the historical entries flag this as a potential misreading risk. Black's 2nd edition's surviving fragment does not cover instance directly, suggesting the entry either appeared elsewhere in that edition or was condensed. Bouvier's Scots law note — that instance is "that which may be insisted on" — is the most useful hint at the term's procedural force in civil law systems, though it is underdeveloped.
Jurisdictional Note
The cause of instance / cause of office distinction is primarily relevant to English ecclesiastical court records and English admiralty jurisdiction before the reorganization of the superior courts in the late nineteenth century. In U.S. federal admiralty practice, the structural distinction is not replicated, though the conceptual difference between party-initiated and court-initiated proceedings persists in other forms. The "court of first instance" formulation is more common in international, civil law, and EU legal contexts than in standard U.S. state court nomenclature.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
civpro_153: Methods of Proving Character — Rule 405 (Reputation, Opinion, Specific Instances) — relevant to the evidentiary use of "specific instances" of conduct as a term of art in character evidence doctrine.
Related Terms
Cause of office — Request — Solicitation — Suit — Action — Original jurisdiction — Court of first instance — Admiralty jurisdiction — Instance court — Pleading — Special instance and request — Implication of contract — Civil law procedure — First instance
INSTANCEmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
In pleading and prac- tice. Solicitation, properly of an earnest or urgent kind. An act is often said to be done at a party's “special instance and re- quest." In the civil and French law. A gen- eral term, designating all sorts of actions and judicial demands. Dig. 44, 7, 58. In ecclesiastical law. Causes of in- stance are those proceeded in at the solicita- tion of some party, as opposed to causes of office, which run in the name of the judge. Hallifax, Civil Law, p. 156. In Scotch law. That which may be in- sisted on at one diet or course of probation. Wharton.
INSTANCEmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
of public records and documents; or of the books and papers of his opponent in an action, for the purpose of better preparing his own case for trial. : —Inspection laws. Laws authorizing and directing the inspection and examination of various kinds of merchandise intended for sale, especially food, with a view to ascertaining its fitness for use, and excluding unwholesome or unmarketable goods from sale, and directing the appointment of official inspectors for that urpose. See Const. U. S. art. 1, § 10, cl. 2; tory, Const. § 1017, et seq. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 202, 6 L. Ed. 23; Clintsman v. Northrop, 8 Cow. (N. Y¥.) 45; Patapsco Guano Co. v. Board of Agriculture. 171 U. S. 345, 18 Sup. Ct. 862, 41 L. Ed. 191; Turner v. State, 55 Md. 263.—Inspection of documents. This phrase refers to the right of a party, in a civil action, to inspect and make copies of documents which are essential or material to the maintenance of his cause, and which are either in the custody of an officer of the law or in the possession of the adverse party. —Inspection, trial by. A mode of trial formerly in use in England, by which the judges of a court decided a point in dispute, upon the testimony of their own senses, without the intervention of a jury. This took place in cases where the fact upon which issue was taken must, from its nature, be evident to the court from ocular demonstration, or other ir refragable proof; and was adopted for the cee expedition of a cause. Bl. Comm. In pleading and practice. Solicitation, properly of an earnest or urgent kind. An act is often said to be done at a party’s “special instance and request.” In the civil and French law. A general term, designating all sorts of actions and judicial. demands. Dig. 44, 7, 58. Im ecclesiastical law. Causes of {nstance are those proceeded in at the solicitation of some party, as opposed to causes of ~— «ma ' INSTANCE ! office, which run.in the name of the judge. Hallifax, Civil Law, p. 156. In Scotch law. That which may be insisted on at one diet or course of probation. Wharton. —Instance court. In English law. That division or department of the court of admirality which exercises all the ordinary admiralty jurisdiction, with tbe single exception of prize cases, the latter belonging to the branch called the “Prize Court.” The term is sometimes used in American law for purposes of explanation, but has no proper application to admiralty courts in the United States, where the powers of both instance and prize courts are conferred without any distinction. 8 Kent, Comm. ‘355, 378; The Betsey, 3 Dall. 6, 1 IL. Ed. 485; The Emulous, 1 Gall. 563, Fed. Cas. No. 4,479.
INSTANCEmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
Application to set aside a proceeding for irregularity must be made as early as possible - "in the first instance." 6 Instance court. That branch of the English court of admiralty which has cognizance of all matters pertaining to intercourse upon the high seas except prizes.7
INSTANCEn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
The act or quality of being instant or pressing; urgency; solicitation; application; suggestion; motion. Undertook at her instance to restore them. Sir W. Scott. That which is instant or urgent; motive. [Obs.] The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. Shak. Occasion; order of occurrence. These seem as if, in the time of Edward I., they were drawn up into the form of a law, in the first instance. Sir M. Hale. That which offers itself or is offered as an illustrative case; something cited in proof or exemplification; a case occurring; an example. Most remarkable instances of suffering. Atterbury. A token; a sign; a symptom or indication. Shak. Causes of instance, those which proceed at the solicitation of some party. Hallifax. -- Court of first instance, the court by which a case is first tried. -- For instance, by way of example or illustration. -- Instance Court (Law), the Court of Admiralty acting within its ordinary jurisdiction, as distinguished from its action as a prize court.
INSTANCEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite; as, to instance a fact. H. Spenser. I shall not instance an abstruse author. Milton.
INSTANCEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To give an example. [Obs.] This story doth not only instance in kingdoms, but in families too. Jer. Taylor.
instancenoun
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.
Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence. | A token; a sign; a symptom or indication. | That which is urgent; motive. | A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something). | An occasion; an order of occurrence. | A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example. | One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same. | A specific occurrence of something that is created or instantiated, such as a database, or an object of a class in object-oriented programming. | A dungeon or other area that is duplicated for each player, or each party of players, that enters it, so that each player or party has a private copy of the area, isolated from other players. | An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area. | An independent server on a decentralised social network, such as Mastodon.
instanceverb
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.
To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite | To cite an example as proof; to exemplify. | To duplicate (a dungeon or other area) for each player, or each party of players, that enters it, so that each player or party has a private copy of the area, isolated from other players. | To render (an object) as part of a batch, using the same geometry data.

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