Definition
"Its" is the possessive form of the pronoun "it" and functions in legal documents as a possessive pronoun referring to a non-personal or non-human antecedent — most commonly a corporation, entity, organization, or thing. In contracts, statutes, and legal instruments, "its" typically appears in signature blocks, recitals, and operative clauses to indicate that the signatory or actor is an entity rather than a natural person (e.g., "ABC Corporation, by its duly authorized officer").
In legal drafting, precision in pronoun use carries substantive weight. "Its" signals entity-level action or ownership and distinguishes the legal person of an organization from the individuals who act on its behalf.
Note: The two Bouvier's entries provided under this heading — one describing gaol liberties (spaces outside prison walls where debtors could reside under bond) and one describing the action for mesne profits (a supplemental action following ejectment to recover profits unlawfully received by a wrongful possessor) — appear to have been indexed under "ITS" in error, likely as fragments of larger entries. They are addressed below under HISTORICAL DICTIONARY SUPPORT. Neither describes a distinct legal term called "its."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Belonging to it.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Possessive form of the pronoun it.
Editorial note: There is no meaningful gap between common and legal usage here. "Its" carries the same possessive function in legal writing as in ordinary English. The only drafting-specific consideration is that legal instruments often require clarity about whether "its" refers to an entity acting in a representative capacity or in its own right — a distinction that rarely arises in everyday speech but can bear on agency, liability, and authority questions in contracts and corporate instruments.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "its" primarily as a drafting and indexing artifact rather than as a substantive legal term. Three practical points:
First, corpus searches using "its" as a search term will produce extremely high noise. Because "its" is one of the most common words in the English language, it functions poorly as a standalone search term in any legal database. Researchers should treat it as a connector or modifier within longer search strings, not as an independent query term.
Second, in older legal instruments — particularly pre-20th century contracts, deeds, and corporate charters — the possessive pronoun for entities was sometimes rendered as "it's" (incorrectly), "thereof," or avoided entirely through circumlocution. Encountering "thereof" in historical documents where modern drafting would use "its" is common; researchers reading historical sources should recognize these as functional equivalents.
Third, in the context of entity authority and signature blocks, the phrase "by its [title]" is the standard marker that an entity is acting through an authorized representative. Cases and disputes about corporate authority, agency, and unauthorized execution often turn on whether execution language correctly reflected the entity's authorization — making this small pronoun a potential signal of larger structural questions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary presents two entries that appear to have been indexed or transmitted under "ITS" in the source data, almost certainly as truncated or misfiled fragments:
The first — describing a space marked out by limits considered part of a prison, within which prisoners (particularly debtors) were permitted to reside at large on giving security — is the entry for GAOL LIBERTIES (also JAIL LIBERTIES or LIBERTIES OF THE PRISON). This was a recognized mitigation of strict imprisonment under capias process in English and early American law. Bouvier's full treatment of gaol liberties appears elsewhere in the dictionary under that heading.
The second — describing a form of action supplemental to ejectment, brought to recover profits unlawfully received during wrongful occupation — is the entry for MESNE PROFITS (or the action for mesne profits). Bouvier's cross-references Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3) and Burrow's Reports for this doctrine. Again, the full entry appears under MESNE PROFITS in the dictionary proper.
Neither entry defines a legal term "its." Researchers relying on digitized or indexed versions of Bouvier's should be aware that OCR errors, indexing truncations, and page-boundary artifacts can produce this kind of misfiling, particularly where an entry begins mid-page with a lowercase pronoun that is misread as a headword.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The encyclopedia entries matched to this term — addressing the exclusive remedy doctrine, civil forfeiture, and after-acquired evidence — were matched on the word "its" appearing in their titles as a possessive pronoun, not as a substantive legal concept. No encyclopedia cross-reference is warranted for the pronoun itself.
For the substantive concepts surfaced by the Bouvier's fragments, see:
- MESNE PROFITS (for the supplemental ejectment action)
- GAOL LIBERTIES / JAIL LIBERTIES (for debtor imprisonment mitigation)