Definition
Of passengers is not a standalone legal term but a qualifying phrase that appears in legal texts — particularly in treatises, pleadings, and statutory provisions — to specify the class of persons to whom a duty, liability, or legal rule applies. In the context of carrier law, "of passengers" distinguishes obligations owed to those transported by a common carrier from obligations owed to freight shippers, third parties, or bystanders.
The phrase most frequently appears in formulations such as "the duty of carriers of passengers," "the liability of carriers of passengers for injury," or "the contract of carriage of passengers." In each use, the phrase functions as a limiting descriptor: it identifies passengers — persons accepted for transport in exchange for fare or under a contract of carriage — as the relevant legal subject, triggering the heightened standard of care associated with common carriage of persons rather than goods.
Common Confusion
"Of passengers" should not be read as defining who qualifies as a passenger — that determination is governed separately by the law of carriers and turns on acceptance, fare payment, and the carrier's undertaking. The phrase simply signals that the rule or duty at issue applies specifically to persons being transported, not to the carrier's other legal relationships. Researchers who encounter the phrase in historical texts should treat it as a term of application, not a term of classification.
Why It Matters in Research
The phrase appears most densely in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century carrier law materials, where treatise writers and courts carefully distinguished between the legal regimes governing passengers and those governing freight. A researcher encountering "of passengers" in historical sources should recognize it as a signal to locate the applicable common carrier doctrine rather than a general negligence or contract framework.
In historical pleadings, the phrase sometimes appears in counts that must precisely identify the plaintiff's status to invoke the higher duty of care owed to passengers versus licensees or trespassers. Misreading or overlooking the phrase can cause a researcher to apply the wrong standard of care when analyzing an older case or statutory provision.
Corpus connections: Materials on railroad law, steamship law, and stage coach law will show the phrase with greatest frequency. As carrier law modernized through the twentieth century and statutory regimes (aviation, interstate bus, maritime passenger) displaced common law pleading conventions, the phrase receded from formal legal usage. Modern statutes typically define "passenger" directly rather than qualifying duties with the phrase.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not contain a standalone entry for "of passengers." The phrase appears incidentally in Bouvier's treatment of carriers and related entries, where it functions precisely as described above — as a qualifying descriptor in discussions of the carrier's duty of care. Bouvier's treatment of carrier law reflects the classical common law framework in which the distinction between carriage of persons and carriage of goods was foundational, and the phrase served as the standard shorthand for that distinction.
The absence of a dedicated entry in Bouvier's is itself informative: historical legal dictionaries treated "of passengers" as grammatical scaffolding within established legal formulations rather than as a term requiring independent definition. Researchers should not expect to find the phrase indexed as a headword in historical dictionaries; it will appear within substantive carrier law discussions.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase carries consistent meaning across common law jurisdictions. Jurisdictional variation arises not from the phrase itself but from the underlying passenger carrier law it invokes, which varies significantly between federal and state regimes and across transportation modes.