Definition
The principal in a contract of mandate — the party who entrusts another (the mandatary) with the performance of a task or commission, typically gratuitous in nature, on the mandant's behalf. The mandant directs the work, bears responsibility for legitimate expenses incurred by the mandatary in performing it, and is bound by acts the mandatary takes within the scope of the mandate. In civil law systems, the mandant is analogous to the principal in a common law agency relationship, though the two are not identical in structure or consequence.
Common Confusion
MANDANT / MANDATARY / MANDATORY: These three terms are routinely conflated in historical sources. The mandant is the directing party — the one who gives the commission. The mandatary (or mandatarius) is the one who receives and performs it. "Mandatory" in its legal sense can refer to the mandatary (the recipient of a mandate), though the same word is more commonly encountered in modern usage as an adjective meaning "required." Researchers working in historical texts should take care: "mandatory" appearing as a noun signals the civil law context and means the agent, not the principal.
MANDANT / BAILOR: Bouvier characterizes the mandant as "the bailor in a contract of mandate," which can mislead. While mandate is technically a species of bailment in civil law taxonomy, not every bailor is a mandant. The mandant-mandatary relationship is distinguished by the gratuitous and service-oriented nature of the commission. Conflating mandant with bailor generally obscures the specific obligations running between the parties.
Why It Matters in Research
Mandant is a civil law term of art that migrated into Scottish and French legal usage and appears in Anglo-American sources almost exclusively when courts or writers are explaining civilian concepts or working in jurisdictions with mixed legal heritage. Researchers will encounter it primarily in three contexts: (1) treatises on bailment that trace the civil law taxonomy underlying common law categories, particularly Story's Commentaries on the Law of Bailments; (2) Scottish case law and institutional writers, where the mandate relationship retained its civilian character longer than in English common law; and (3) Louisiana jurisprudence, where mandate as a distinct civilian relationship has always had statutory grounding.
In common law research, the term is largely vestigial. By the nineteenth century, English courts had absorbed mandate into the broader law of agency without preserving the civilian vocabulary. Finding "mandant" in an English or American case is a signal that the author is drawing on civilian sources or writing in a comparative mode — worth noting for sourcing purposes.
The maxim appended to the Black's entries — Mandata licita recipiunt strictam interpretationem, sed illicita latam et extensam ("Lawful commands receive a strict interpretation, but unlawful commands a broad and extended one") — is frequently cited in historical sources alongside the mandant entry. It governs how the scope of the mandate is construed and bears directly on the mandant's liability exposure. Researchers should not treat this as a secondary detail; it is substantively connected to the term's operational meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in substantial agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and Burrill identify the mandant as "the employing party in the contract of mandatum or mandate" and each cite Story's Bailments § 138 as authority — a consistent trail that points researchers to the same primary source. Burrill adds the Latin root (mandans) and flags the French law context explicitly, which is useful for researchers tracking the term's civilian pedigree.
Bouvier's characterization of the mandant as "the bailor in a contract of mandate" is technically defensible but framed in a way that emphasizes taxonomic placement over functional meaning. It is less instructive than the Black's formulation for a researcher trying to understand the party's role.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is fragmentary in the available text and appears to have been corrupted in transcription — the passage wanders into mandamus territory without completing the mandant definition. Researchers should treat the Rapalje entry as unreliable for this term and defer to Black's and Burrill.
Anderson's simply cross-references "MANDATE, 3," offering nothing independently useful. This is characteristic of Anderson's treatment of civil law derivative terms and is a reminder to follow the cross-reference rather than stop at the entry.
None of the historical dictionaries address the mandant's affirmative obligations in any detail — specifically, the duty to reimburse the mandatary for expenses and to indemnify against losses suffered in performing the mandate. Researchers needing that operational detail must go to Story directly or to civilian treatises.
Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana treats mandate as a distinct nominate contract with its own Civil Code articles, preserving the mandant-mandatary structure in statutory form. Scottish law similarly retained the civilian framework. In all other U.S. jurisdictions and in English common law, the functional relationship has been absorbed into agency doctrine, and the term "mandant" will not appear in modern statutes or case law.