Definition
As an adjective in legal usage, "material" means significant enough to matter — to a decision, a claim, a contract, a disclosure obligation, or a legal standard. The word does not mean merely relevant or related; it means consequential. Something is material when its presence, absence, truth, or falsity would or could affect an outcome. As a noun, "material" has a separate and narrower legal meaning specific to construction and lien law.
1. ADJECTIVE — General Legal Meaning. A fact, allegation, term, representation, or piece of evidence is material when it is of sufficient importance to influence the matter at hand. Immateriality is a recognized ground for excluding evidence, dismissing allegations, or treating a defect as harmless. Materiality is always contextual: the same fact may be material in one proceeding and immaterial in another.
2. ADJECTIVE — Evidence Law. Evidence is material when it bears on a fact genuinely in dispute in the case, as distinguished from facts that are collateral or cumulative. Materiality is a component of relevance in older usage; modern federal evidence rules fold materiality into the relevance standard, but the word continues to appear in constitutional doctrine — Brady and its progeny require disclosure of evidence that is "material" to guilt or punishment.
3. ADJECTIVE — Contract Law. A material breach is one that defeats the essential purpose of the contract, justifying the non-breaching party's right to suspend or terminate performance rather than merely sue for damages. Not every breach is material. Whether a breach crosses that threshold depends on factors including the extent of non-performance, the likelihood of cure, and the degree to which the breaching party has already performed.
4. ADJECTIVE — Fraud and Misrepresentation. A misrepresentation is material when a reasonable person would consider it important in deciding whether to enter a transaction, or when the speaker knows the other party would regard it as important even if a reasonable person would not. The materiality inquiry thus has both objective and subjective dimensions.
5. ADJECTIVE — Securities Law. In the securities context, information is material if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable investor would consider it important in making an investment decision. This formulation — drawn from the landmark Supreme Court cases in this area — is the dominant standard for disclosure obligations under federal securities law.
6. ADJECTIVE — Perjury and False Statements. A false statement is material to a perjury or false statement charge when it has a natural tendency to influence, or is capable of influencing, the decision of the tribunal or agency to which it is addressed. A lie about an immaterial fact ordinarily does not support a perjury conviction.
7. NOUN — Construction and Lien Law. As a noun, "material" (more often "materials") refers to physical supplies, goods, or articles furnished for the construction or repair of a structure. A materialman is one who supplies such goods and may have lien rights against the improved property. This usage is largely confined to mechanics' lien statutes and construction contracts.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Of real importance or great consequences; significant; substantial. Also: consisting of or relating to physical matter.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Of solid or weighty character; not insubstantial; of consequence; not to be dispensed with. Also: consisting of matter, not spiritual.
The word carries the same core sense in both ordinary and legal English — something important, consequential, not to be dismissed. The research trap is precision: in law, materiality is not merely a description of significance but a threshold test with legal consequences attached. Whether a fact, breach, or misrepresentation is "material" often determines whether a claim succeeds, evidence is admissible, or a contract survives. The ordinary sense of "important" does not carry that operative weight.
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Common Confusion
MATERIAL vs. RELEVANT. In older case law and some historical dictionaries, "material" and "relevant" are used interchangeably. They are not synonymous. Relevance asks whether evidence tends to make a fact more or less probable. Materiality asks whether that fact actually matters to the case. The Federal Rules of Evidence merged these into a single relevance standard, but constitutional doctrine — particularly Brady materiality — preserves the distinction. Researchers reading pre-Rules opinions must determine which concept the court actually applied.
MATERIAL BREACH vs. MINOR (PARTIAL) BREACH. These are not points on a spectrum but distinct legal categories with different consequences. A material breach discharges the non-breaching party's duty to perform; a minor breach does not discharge that duty but gives rise to a damages claim. Conflating the two is a significant error in contract analysis.
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Core Elements
For materiality in the misrepresentation and fraud context, courts typically assess:
Objective element: Would a reasonable person in the position of the recipient consider the fact important in deciding whether to act?
Subjective element: Did the speaker know or have reason to know that this particular recipient would regard the fact as important, even if a hypothetical reasonable person would not?
For materiality in contract breach, the inquiry is multi-factored and not mechanical. Relevant considerations include: the extent to which the injured party will be deprived of the expected benefit; the adequacy of compensation for that deprivation; the extent of forfeiture suffered by the breaching party; the likelihood of cure; and the degree to which the breaching party's conduct comports with good faith.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Material allegation: An allegation that forms a substantive part of the pleading's claim or defense — one that, if removed, would leave the pleading without a viable theory.
Material alteration: A change to a written instrument that modifies the legal rights of a party, rendering the instrument void or voidable in its altered form.
Material breach: See above; the contract law standard for a failure of performance that justifies suspension or termination by the other party.
Material misrepresentation: A false statement of fact that is significant enough to induce reliance or affect a legal transaction.
Material support: A statutory term in federal counterterrorism law referring to resources, services, personnel, or assistance provided to designated foreign terrorist organizations. The term has a specific statutory definition and has been the subject of First Amendment litigation.
Material witness: A witness whose testimony is sufficiently important to a proceeding that the court may compel the witness's presence or, in extreme cases, detain the witness to secure availability.
Materialman: In construction and lien law, a supplier of physical goods used in building or improving a structure, potentially entitled to a mechanic's or materialman's lien.
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Why It Matters in Research
"Material" is one of the most context-dependent words in legal research. The same word carries different threshold tests depending on the field: the Brady standard for criminal disclosure, the reasonable investor standard in securities law, the multi-factor test for contract breach, the fraud standard for misrepresentation. A case that defines materiality for securities purposes does not define it for perjury, and vice versa. Researchers must identify the field before importing a materiality standard from another area of doctrine.
Historical sources treat "material" and "relevant" as near-synonyms. Post-Rules researchers need to be alert to this conflation and should not assume that a court using "material" to describe evidence was applying a distinct materiality test rather than simply using a then-common synonym for relevant.
In the securities law context, the materiality standard was substantially developed through judicial decision and is still largely case-law driven. Statute alone will not give a researcher the operational definition.
The noun sense — materialman, materials — is confined almost entirely to mechanics' lien and construction law contexts. When encountering "material" as a noun in a case or statute, the lien law context should be checked before assuming the adjective sense applies.
The "material support" phrase in federal counterterrorism statutes is a defined term of art that has been significantly litigated for First Amendment overbreadth. Researchers should not read it through the general adjective definition; it has its own statutory and constitutional history.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Anderson's agree on the adjective definition: important, essential, going to substance rather than form, having influence or effect. The standard examples — material allegation, material evidence — appear in all three sources consistently.
Anderson's is the only source in this set that gives significant attention to the noun sense, expressly addressing materialman and construction-related usage. Black's does not develop this use, though the materialman lien concept was well-established by the time of both editions.
All historical sources treat materiality in evidence as a relevance concept: evidence is material when it "goes to the substantial matters in dispute." This older framing predates the Federal Rules of Evidence and conflates what modern doctrine treats as distinct. Researchers using historical dictionaries for evidentiary materiality should read those definitions in their pre-Rules context.
None of the historical sources addresses the securities law materiality standard, the Brady constitutional doctrine, or the federal material support statutes — all of which postdate these texts. The historical definitions are foundational but incomplete for modern research in these areas.
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Jurisdictional Note
The materiality threshold varies by context and jurisdiction. Federal securities law has its own judicially developed reasonable-investor standard. Federal criminal law has distinct materiality standards for perjury, false statements, and Brady disclosure. Contract law materiality for breach is governed by state law, with many states following Restatement formulations but not all uniformly so. Mechanics' lien and materialman statutes are creatures of state law and vary significantly across jurisdictions in definitions, notice requirements, and lien priority rules.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
contracts_54: Performance — Material Breach vs. Minor Breach (The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)
criminal_253: Terrorism Offenses and Material Support (18 USC 2339) (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
constitutional_216: Terrorism, Material Support Statutes, and First Amendment Limits (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)
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