Definition
A lucrative office is a public office to which fixed compensation is attached — pay considered adequate for the performance of its duties. The defining characteristic is not the amount of the pay, but its existence as a fixed, established emolument tied to the office itself, as distinguished from honorary or purely ceremonial positions that carry no compensation.
The term arises almost exclusively in constitutional contexts, particularly in provisions — common in 19th-century state constitutions — that prohibited any person from holding more than one lucrative office at the same time. The practical question in those cases was whether a given position qualified: did it carry fixed pay for official duties? If yes, it was lucrative in the constitutional sense.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Lucrative" means producing a great deal of profit; financially rewarding.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Lucrative" — yielding lucre or gain; profitable; making increase of money or goods; gainful.
The legal meaning diverges from the common meaning in an important way. Ordinary usage implies a high or profitable return. The legal term carries no such threshold — an office paying a modest fixed salary qualifies as lucrative for constitutional purposes. The question is not whether the pay is generous, but whether any fixed compensation attaches to the duties at all.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely a 19th-century state constitutional term. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in two contexts: (1) state constitutional texts and enabling legislation from the antebellum and Reconstruction eras, and (2) state court decisions construing dual-office-holding prohibitions under those constitutions.
The central research trap is assuming the word carries its modern connotation of high pay. Courts applying dual-office prohibitions asked only whether compensation was fixed and attached to the office — not whether it was substantial. County commissioners, recorders, prison directors, mayors, and militia officers were all found to hold lucrative offices in Indiana courts alone, regardless of the modest pay those positions commanded.
Jurisdictional variation matters heavily here. Not all state constitutions used the phrase "lucrative office"; some used "office of profit," "office of emolument," or "civil office." These phrases overlap substantially but are not identical, and researchers should not assume that interpretive precedent under one formulation controls under another. The Indiana cases in Bouvier are useful illustrations but are not universally applicable.
Federal research note: The federal Constitution does not use the term "lucrative office," but the Ineligibility Clause (Article I, Section 6) and the Emoluments Clauses address related concerns about officers holding positions of profit under the United States. Researchers connecting state "lucrative office" doctrine to federal constitutional structure should track the terminology shift carefully — the concepts parallel but do not map perfectly.
For corpus researchers, this term will appear in state court reporters from roughly 1820 through the early 20th century with declining frequency thereafter. Modern state constitutional revisions generally replaced or restructured dual-office prohibitions, and the specific phrase "lucrative office" has largely dropped out of active legal usage. Its appearances in 20th-century sources are almost always historical references or quotations from older constitutional texts.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary source and gives a workable definition: an office is lucrative when "pay, supposed to be an adequate compensation, is fixed to the performance of" its duties. This framing is judicially derived — Bouvier cites Indiana case law directly — and reflects how courts operationalized the constitutional prohibition rather than any abstract theoretical definition.
What Bouvier does not address, and what historical legal dictionaries generally omit, is the boundary question: how is a lucrative office distinguished from a mere employment or contractual position? Courts generally required that the position have the attributes of a public office — appointment or election under law, defined duties, some tenure — before the "lucrative" question even arose. A paid government contractor, for example, would not ordinarily qualify as holding a lucrative office.
Blackstone and early English sources use cognate concepts (office of profit, offices under the Crown) but the specific American constitutional formulation is a domestic development tied to republican concerns about the concentration of public trust and patronage.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term is almost entirely a state constitutional law concept. Its meaning and application varied by state depending on how each constitution's dual-office prohibition was worded. Indiana courts developed a substantial body of doctrine under their provision; other states with different language (such as "office of profit" or "civil office") produced somewhat different tests. Federal constitutional law uses parallel but distinct language and doctrine.
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