Definition
Intercommuning, in Scots law, was the act of having any dealings, communication, or association with a person who had been formally denounced by the Privy Council of Scotland. The term is most commonly encountered in the phrase "letters of intercommuning" — official instruments issued in the king's name directing the general population (the lieges) to have no contact whatsoever with named individuals. Those who disobeyed risked being treated as participants in the crimes attributed to the denounced person.
Letters of intercommuning functioned as a form of civil and social outlawry. By issuing such letters, the Privy Council effectively placed an individual beyond the protection of ordinary society: no one could lawfully shelter them, feed them, house them, supply them with goods, or maintain any form of intercourse with them. Violation of the prohibition exposed the ordinary subject to the charge of being "art and part" — that is, complicit — in the denounced person's offenses.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "intercommune" — carrying no independent legal meaning in contemporary use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; "intercommune" would have carried the general sense of communicating mutually or holding intercourse between parties.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is historical rather than semantic. The word's root sense — mutual communication — is actually inverted in the legal context: "intercommuning" names the prohibited act, and "letters of intercommuning" are the instruments that make such communication a legal offense. A researcher encountering the term in a historical Scots document should not read it as merely describing an exchange; it signals a formal legal prohibition and its associated penalties.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of specifically Scottish legal history with no direct equivalent in English common law or in American law. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus are most likely to encounter it in:
1. Historical Scots law materials, particularly sources dealing with the Privy Council of Scotland prior to the Acts of Union (1707), after which the Scottish Privy Council was abolished.
2. Comparative law discussions contrasting outlawry mechanisms in Scots and English legal traditions.
3. Treatises on "art and part" liability in Scots criminal law, where intercommuning cases provide historical examples of constructive participation in crime.
The principal research trap is anachronism. Letters of intercommuning belong to a pre-Union institutional framework. A researcher who finds the term in a post-1707 source is likely dealing with a historical description, a legal treatise citing older authority, or a Scottish ecclesiastical context (the Kirk used comparable social exclusion mechanisms). Do not assume the instrument was in active legal use after the abolition of the Scottish Privy Council.
The truncation in both Black's editions is worth noting: both entries cut off mid-sentence ("in their cri—"), meaning the corpus does not preserve the full statement of consequences. Researchers relying solely on Black's for the scope of the prohibition should seek primary Scottish Privy Council records or dedicated Scots law treatises such as those of Viscount Stair or George Mackenzie for complete treatment.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both the first and second editions of Black's Law Dictionary carry nearly identical entries, suggesting the second edition reproduced the first without independent research into primary Scottish sources. This is consistent with Black's general treatment of Scots law terms, which tends to be summary and occasionally incomplete.
Neither edition contextualizes the instrument within the broader Scots law machinery of horning and outlawry, of which intercommuning was one enforcement tool. Letters of intercommuning were typically a step within a sequence: a person might first be "put to the horn" (declared an outlaw by letters of horning) and subsequently made the subject of letters of intercommuning to tighten the social and material isolation. Black's presents intercommuning as a standalone concept, which understates its procedural setting.
Both editions agree on the essential character of the prohibition — no resetting (sheltering), supplying, harboring, or any intercourse — and on the penalty mechanism of art-and-part liability. On these core points the sources are reliable as far as they go.
Jurisdictional Note
Strictly a Scots law institution. No equivalent instrument existed in English common law, which used attainder, outlawry, and related mechanisms to achieve broadly similar social exclusion. Researchers should not assume functional equivalence; the procedural origins, institutional actors, and legal consequences differ materially.