Definition
"Ization" is not a recognized legal term. It appears to be a fragment, suffix, or typographical artifact rather than a standalone legal concept. As a word-forming element, "-ization" (also "-isation") is a suffix attached to verb or noun stems to form nouns denoting a process, act, or result — as in "naturalization," "privatization," or "authorization." No legal dictionary in the standard reference corpus defines "ization" as an independent term of art.
The source material associated with this entry (Rapalje & Lawrence) does not contain a definition for "ization" as such. The entry retrieved under this heading — concerning whether citizens of other states qualify as "foreigners" under various statutory constructions — is plainly misattributed or the result of a cataloging or indexing error. That source material belongs to a discussion of the term FOREIGNERS, not to any concept called "ization."
Common Confusion
Researchers should not confuse this fragment with any of the many substantive legal terms it may represent in truncated form. The suffix "-ization" is productive in legal English and attaches to dozens of terms of art. The meaning, history, and legal weight vary entirely depending on the full term. Treat this entry as a pointer, not a source.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "ization" as a standalone index or headword in a historical legal dictionary corpus should treat it as a probable artifact of optical character recognition (OCR) error, truncation, or corrupted indexing — not as evidence of a recognized legal term. Suffix fragments of this kind appear in digitized legal reference works when full headwords are cut off at page breaks, when binding obscures the leading characters of a term, or when OCR misreads a capitalized prefix as a separate entry.
The practical research implication: if you are searching the Law Mind corpus and surface this entry, the intended headword is almost certainly a full compound term ending in "-ization." Candidates worth investigating based on neighboring content in 19th-century legal dictionaries include NATURALIZATION, ORGANIZATION, COLONIZATION, or AUTHORIZATION, among others. The associated source text about "foreigners" and the citizenship of out-of-state persons points most directly toward NATURALIZATION or DENIZATION as the likely intended headword.
Do not cite this entry as authority for any proposition. The source passage cited (1 Root (Conn.) 408; 15 Mass. 354; 1 Pet. (U.S.) 343, 349) addresses statutory interpretation of the word "foreigners" as applied to citizens of sister states — a question of comity and constitutional citizenship that belongs under its own proper heading.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence's A Dictionary of American and English Law (1883) does not define "ization" as a term. The content retrieved here — addressing whether citizens of other American states are "foreigners" within the meaning of a statute — is substantively a note on FOREIGNERS and early American comity doctrine. The cited authorities (Root's Connecticut Reports, Massachusetts Reports, and Peters' United States Supreme Court Reports) predate federal codification of citizenship and reflect an era when the constitutional status of interstate citizens was genuinely contested. That material is historically significant but is misassigned to this headword.
No other dictionary on the Law Mind shelf (Black's, Bouvier, Burrill, Wharton, or otherwise) carries "ization" as an entry.