Definition
In Scots law, a march is a boundary line or border, particularly one marking the limit between two adjacent landholdings, estates, or territorial jurisdictions. The term is used both as a standalone noun and as a compositional element: a march-dike is a boundary wall or fence, and a march-stone is a boundary marker or cairn set in the ground to fix a dividing point between properties.
The term carries no significant procedural or statutory meaning in English common law or American jurisprudence. Its legal relevance is essentially confined to Scottish land law and historical border law, where disputes over march lines — where exactly a boundary ran, whether a march-dike belonged to one proprietor or was shared, and who bore the burden of maintaining it — formed a recognized category of property litigation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To walk with long, regular strides, as a soldier does; to cause someone to walk somewhere; to go to war; to make military advances; to make steady progress.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The third month of the year, containing thirty-one days. Also referenced in the expression "as mad as a March Hare," derived from the excitability of hares during their spring rutting season.
Neither common meaning — the month, nor the military stride — has any connection to the legal term. A researcher encountering "march" in a Scots legal document should not read it as a temporal reference or as military movement. The legal meaning is purely spatial: a line that divides one parcel or jurisdiction from another.
Common Confusion
The word "march" appears in legal and historical documents in at least three entirely distinct senses: (1) the Scots property-law boundary term defined here; (2) the historical English and Continental use of "The Marches" to denote frontier or border zones between kingdoms or lordships (such as the Welsh Marches or the Scottish Marches), which is a related but distinct political and territorial concept; and (3) ordinary temporal or military usage that carries no legal significance. These senses can coexist in close proximity in historical sources, particularly in documents concerning Anglo-Scottish border territories, and require careful contextual reading.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Scots land records, sasines, or historical conveyancing documents will encounter "march" as a routine term of property description. Boundary clauses in Scottish deeds frequently define subjects by reference to their marches — naming adjacent proprietors, existing march-dikes, or fixed march-stones as points of reference. Misreading these boundary references, or skipping over them as archaic filler, risks misidentifying the subjects of a conveyance or the extent of a grant.
The related concept of the "Marches" — frontier zones governed by special law and administered by wardens — appears in medieval and early modern sources and is a distinct legal and political institution. The Law Mind corpus likely contains both usages; researchers should distinguish between "march" as a specific boundary line in a property context and "the Marches" as a broader jurisdictional or political designation.
Historical Scots law developed a body of practice around march disputes that is not well represented in English legal dictionaries and is largely absent from American sources. Researchers using English-law dictionaries as a primary reference will find little guidance on the procedural and customary rules governing march-dike maintenance, march-stone removal, and the action of molestation used to enforce boundary rights. Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland is the more useful reference for this material.
Black's Law Dictionary's entry briefly cross-references French mercantile law under the heading MARCHANDISES AVARIÉES (damaged goods), an entirely unrelated term that appears to have been grouped with MARCH as a space-saving editorial decision. Researchers should not infer any connection between the Scots boundary term and the French commercial term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Black's are in full agreement on the core definition: a march is a boundary line or border in Scots law. Both cite Bell's Dictionary as authority, and neither entry attempts to extend the definition beyond Scotland or to identify any common-law analogue.
Both entries are brief to the point of being skeletal. Neither discusses march-dike maintenance obligations, the process of fixing or relocating march-stones, the distinction between a march and a mere feature of physical geography used as a boundary, or the remedies available when a march was disputed or a march-stone removed. Researchers requiring substantive guidance on Scots boundary law will need to consult Bell directly and look beyond the general English-language legal dictionaries represented in the historical shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The term in this legal sense is specific to Scots law and to the historical law of the Anglo-Scottish and Welsh border regions. It carries no recognized legal meaning in English common law, American law, or civil-law jurisdictions. Documents originating in Scotland or concerning Scottish property will be the primary context for encountering this term.