Definition
Letters of correspondence, in legal usage, refers to written communications — letters exchanged between parties — that may be received as evidence in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings. The term appears primarily in Scots law, where it functioned as a recognized evidentiary category in criminal trials. A letter written by the accused (the panel, in Scots procedure) and introduced at trial constituted admissible evidence against that person. By contrast, a letter from a third party merely found in the accused's possession did not carry the same evidentiary weight and was generally not admissible against the panel on that basis alone.
The phrase does not describe a discrete legal instrument in the way that "letters patent" or "letters testamentary" do. It is instead a descriptive term identifying a class of documentary evidence — personal written communications — and the rules governing their admissibility.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Correspondence" means the exchange of letters or other written communications between people; the letters themselves as a collective body.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Correspondence" is defined as communication by means of letters; also the letters collectively that pass between correspondents.
The common meaning and the legal usage are not far apart — both treat correspondence as written communications. The legal distinction lies in the evidentiary treatment: not all letters are equal in court. The authorship of a letter, not mere possession, was the operative legal fact. A researcher using this term in legal sources should focus less on what "correspondence" means as a word and more on the rules that determine when a letter may be used against its author.
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Common Confusion
LETTERS OF CORRESPONDENCE vs. LETTERS (other legal forms): Legal literature employs "letters" as the first word of many distinct instruments — letters patent, letters rogatory, letters testamentary, letters of administration, letters of marque. None of these is related to letters of correspondence. The phrase "letters of correspondence" is not an instrument conferring authority or right; it is an evidentiary category. Researchers encountering any "letters of ___" construction should identify the full phrase before assigning meaning.
LETTERS OF CORRESPONDENCE vs. DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE (generally): In modern evidence law, written communications are subsumed under broader doctrines of documentary evidence, authentication, and the business records exception, among others. The term "letters of correspondence" as a discrete evidentiary category is largely a historical Scots law usage and does not appear as a formal term of art in contemporary American, English, or most Commonwealth evidence codes.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is narrow in scope and historically bounded. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in Scots law sources and in older common law treatises that drew on Scots practice. Several navigational points are worth noting.
First, the term carries a specific procedural context. Scots criminal procedure used the word "panel" for the accused — a usage that has no equivalent in English or American practice. Any source that pairs "letters of correspondence" with "panel" is drawing on Scots procedure specifically, not general common law.
Second, the authorship rule embedded in this term — that a letter is evidence against its writer but not against someone who merely possesses it — reflects a principle that persists in modern evidence law under different labels. In American practice, a party's own written statement is a party admission and may be introduced against that party without hearsay objection. The modern doctrine is broader and more developed, but the underlying logic is the same. Researchers tracing the historical roots of party admissions doctrine may find Scots treatment of letters of correspondence a useful early articulation of the principle.
Third, this term does not appear in most American legal dictionaries of any era. Its presence in Black's signals that Black drew on Scots and civil law sources to fill gaps in common law vocabulary — a characteristic of early editions. Researchers relying on Black's for American legal usage should treat entries sourced to Bell or other Scots authorities as comparative, not domestic.
Fourth, in modern tax and regulatory practice, written correspondence between a taxpayer and an agency (such as the IRS correspondence audit process) carries formal legal consequences of a different kind — deadlines, waiver risks, statutory notice requirements. That context is entirely distinct from the evidentiary Scots law usage, but the phrase "correspondence" can appear in both settings. Context will always determine which framework applies.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source providing an entry, and it attributes the definition directly to Bell — a reference to William Bell's Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland, a standard Scots law reference. Black's entry is brief and accurate as far as it goes, capturing the core admissibility rule and the authorship/possession distinction.
What Black's does not address: the procedural mechanics by which such letters were introduced at trial in Scots practice, the authentication requirements, or how the rule interacted with other Scots evidentiary principles. The entry is essentially a transplant from Scots legal literature into a general American law dictionary, useful as a pointer but not as a complete treatment of the doctrine.
No other major historical legal dictionaries — Bouvier, Burrill, Wharton — carry a distinct entry for this phrase, which confirms that it was not a term of art in American or English common law practice. Its inclusion in Black's reflects the comparative scope of early editions rather than domestic usage.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is a term of art in Scots law and has no established independent meaning in American, English, or most Commonwealth legal systems. In those systems, the evidentiary treatment of letters and written communications is governed by general documentary evidence rules and hearsay doctrine rather than by any category called "letters of correspondence."
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