Definition
Master and servant is the common law classification for the legal relationship between an employer who directs and controls the work of another, and the person performing that work under such direction and control. The relationship is defined not merely by the payment of wages but by the power of the employer — the master — to dictate not only the end result of the work but the manner and means by which it is performed. The person subject to that control is the servant.
The master-servant relationship carries significant legal consequences. Most importantly, it gives rise to vicarious liability: a master is liable for the tortious acts of a servant committed within the scope of employment. It also historically governed the duties owed by employers to workers regarding safe working conditions, the fellow-servant rule, assumption of risk, and contributory negligence — forming the foundational framework of employment tort law before workers' compensation statutes displaced much of it.
The relationship is distinguished from that of employer and independent contractor. An independent contractor agrees to produce a specified result but exercises independent judgment about the method. A servant submits to the master's ongoing direction over how the work is done.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Master" commonly denotes a person with authority, skill, or ownership over something or someone. "Servant" denotes a person who serves another, often in a domestic capacity. Together, the phrase evokes a hierarchical household or feudal arrangement.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defined servant as "one who serves another" and master as "one having authority over another; a ruler; a director; a person having another living being subject to his will." Both terms were used freely in domestic, commercial, and social contexts.
The legal meaning is narrower and more technical than the common understanding suggests. In law, the critical element is not social hierarchy or domestic service but the right of control over the method of work. A highly paid professional can be a servant in the legal sense if subject to sufficient direction; a low-wage worker performing entirely unsupervised task-based work may not be. The distinction carries major liability consequences that the ordinary meaning of the words does not signal.
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Common Confusion
Master and servant is frequently conflated with the independent contractor relationship. The confusion matters enormously because vicarious liability does not ordinarily attach when the injuring party is an independent contractor rather than a servant. Courts have developed multi-factor tests to distinguish the two, with control over the means of work remaining the central inquiry. Researchers should also note that "master" in modern procedural contexts — particularly the federal court appointment of a "special master" under Rule 53 — is entirely unrelated to the employment law doctrine. The procedural master is a judicial officer, not an employer.
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Core Elements
The master-servant relationship requires:
1. CONTROL OVER METHOD: The master must direct or retain the right to direct not merely the outcome of the work but the manner in which it is performed. This is the dispositive element separating servant from independent contractor.
2. PERSONAL SERVICE: The servant performs labor personally; the relationship is not fulfilled by the servant delegating the work to others at will.
3. CONSIDERATION: The servant renders service for pay or other valuable consideration. Purely gratuitous personal service may fall outside the strict doctrine.
4. CONSENSUAL ENGAGEMENT: The servant enters the relationship voluntarily; compelled labor is governed by different legal principles entirely.
5. SCOPE OF EMPLOYMENT: Vicarious liability attaches only for acts performed within the scope of employment — acts of the kind the servant was engaged to perform, occurring substantially within authorized time and space, and motivated at least in part by a purpose to serve the master.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a term undergoing permanent historical transition. Master and servant was the dominant common law framework for employment relationships through the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. Researchers working in cases and treatises from that period will encounter it as the operative doctrinal category where modern sources would say employer-employee or principal-agent. Understanding master and servant is prerequisite to reading pre-workers'-compensation tort cases involving workplace injuries, the fellow-servant rule, assumption of risk doctrine, and respondeat superior.
Several traps await researchers in historical sources. First, the fellow-servant rule — which barred a servant from recovering from the master for injuries caused by a co-worker — was a major limitation on master liability that historical dictionaries and treatises address extensively but that has no direct modern analog outside of a few surviving jurisdictions with specialized applications. Second, historical sources often treat master and servant, agency, and respondeat superior as overlapping without cleanly separating them; a servant is always an agent for purposes of vicarious liability, but not every agent is a servant. Third, the duties of the master toward the servant regarding safe premises and safe equipment, described at length in Bouvier, were the precursors to modern occupational safety obligations; the cases cited in Bouvier reflect the negligence standard in force before statutory workers' compensation regimes.
For modern research, the master-servant framework has been substantially replaced by statutory employment law — workers' compensation, Title VII, the FLSA, the NLRA — but the common law doctrine remains relevant to vicarious liability analysis in tort, to gig economy and contractor classification disputes, and to cases arising in jurisdictions or contexts where statutory coverage is incomplete.
The Restatement (Third) of Agency (2006) formally retired "master and servant" in favor of "employer and employee," marking the official obsolescence of the historical terminology in American legal doctrine. Researchers working across this transition should expect terminological inconsistency in sources spanning the twentieth century.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three shelf sources agree on the core definition: the relationship exists where one person, for pay or valuable consideration, enters the service of another and devotes personal labor to that person for an agreed period. Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence track each other closely on this formulation, both drawing from Stephen's Commentaries.
Bouvier adds the most analytically useful gloss: the master is one who not only prescribes the end of work but who directs, or at any moment may direct, the means — or retains the power of controlling the work. This is the control test in its classical statement, and Bouvier's articulation is more precise than Black's or Rapalje on this point.
Bouvier also addresses the master's duty of care toward servants in considerably more depth than the other sources, cataloguing obligations to provide a reasonably safe workplace and to maintain machinery in safe condition. The string of federal and state citations in Bouvier reflects the late-nineteenth-century negligence cases that would soon be overtaken by workers' compensation legislation; researchers should treat those citations as a guide to the historical common law baseline rather than current authority.
None of the shelf sources adequately addresses the fellow-servant rule as a doctrine in its own right, though it is implicit in the broader framework. Researchers needing depth on that doctrine should consult treatises specifically, as the dictionary entries assume familiarity with it rather than explaining it.
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Jurisdictional Note
The master-servant framework was common law doctrine applied across American and English jurisdictions, but workers' compensation statutes — enacted state by state in the United States between roughly 1910 and 1950 — displaced the common law tort framework for most workplace injury claims. The precise scope of displacement, and the survival of common law claims in particular circumstances, varies by state. The independent contractor classification test also varies: some jurisdictions apply the common law control test; others apply the economic reality test or the ABC test (as in California's Dynamex decision and AB5). Researchers must identify which test governs in the jurisdiction at issue.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
RECEIVERSHIP AND APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL MASTERS — RULE 53 (Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia): Addresses the procedural "master" in federal court practice — an entirely distinct use of the term with no connection to employment law doctrine.
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