Definition
To ordain is to enact, establish, or institute by authoritative act. In legal usage, the term carries two primary senses:
1. Legislative/Constitutional: To formally enact or establish a law, constitution, or court by the exercise of sovereign or delegated authority. The word appears in its most prominent legal context in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution ("We the People ... do ordain and establish this Constitution") and in Article III, which authorizes Congress to "ordain and establish" inferior federal courts. In these usages, to ordain is to bring something into legal existence through foundational or constitutive authority — not merely to regulate, but to create.
2. Ecclesiastical/Institutional: To invest a person with ministerial or sacerdotal authority; to admit a person into holy orders or clerical office through a formal rite or appointment. A minister, priest, or bishop is ordained when clothed with the authority to perform religious functions. This sense has legal relevance in matters of religious corporation law, clergy status, tax exemption, and the ministerial exception doctrine.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To decree; to admit into ministry; to predestine or prearrange unalterably.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To set in order; to regulate or establish by appointment, decree, or law; to constitute; to institute.
The common meanings of ordain — predestination and religious ordination — are both present in legal sources, but neither is the dominant legal sense. Researchers reading constitutional text or early statutes will encounter ordain in its sovereign-enactment sense, which is broader and more foundational than ordinary usage suggests. The word signals not merely regulation but origination of authority itself. The ecclesiastical sense, while intuitive to modern readers, requires separate legal analysis when it arises in disputes over clergy status or religious freedom claims.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Constitutional ordination: The act by which a sovereign people or legislative body brings a constitution or court into legal existence. Distinct from ordinary legislation in that it is foundational rather than regulatory.
Ecclesiastical ordination: The formal rite or institutional act by which a religious body invests an individual with clerical authority. Legally significant in determining who qualifies as an ordained minister for purposes of tax law, employment law exemptions, and the ministerial exception.
Why It Matters in Research
The term ordain is not a high-frequency research target on its own, but it is a structurally important word in constitutional and ecclesiastical legal texts. Two research traps are worth flagging:
First, constitutional interpretation. When courts interpret the scope of congressional power to "ordain and establish" inferior federal courts under Article III, the word ordain is doing real legal work — it conveys that Congress is not merely organizing courts but bringing them into constitutional existence. Researchers tracing the history of federal court jurisdiction or the Exceptions Clause will encounter this usage repeatedly in early federal opinions and must read ordain in its foundational, not regulatory, sense.
Second, the ecclesiastical sense creates a distinct research strand. Whether a person has been "ordained" determines legal status in several areas: the IRS housing allowance exclusion for ordained ministers, the ministerial exception under employment discrimination law, and state religious corporation statutes. Historical sources treat ordination as a binary institutional fact (invested with authority or not), but modern litigation frequently contests who counts as ordained when a religious group's internal structure is informal or non-traditional. The historical dictionary entries do not address this litigation complexity.
Corpus researchers should also note that ordain and establish frequently appear as a paired phrase in constitutional and statutory texts. Searching for ordain alone may miss significant passages; searching the collocation ordain and establish will capture the constitutional usage more reliably.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are consistent and compact on this term. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's converge on the legislative/constitutional sense: to institute, establish, make an ordinance, or enact a constitution or law. Bouvier's is the most useful of the four, anchoring the definition directly in constitutional text with references to both the Preamble and Article III. Black's 2nd edition adds citations to Kepner v. Commonwealth and United States v. Smith as illustrative authority.
Anderson's is the most complete, capturing both primary senses — the enactment sense and the ecclesiastical investiture sense — and cross-referencing ORDINANCE, which is the appropriate next lookup for the legislative strand. None of the historical dictionaries address the ministerial exception or modern employment law dimensions of ecclesiastical ordination; those are twentieth-century doctrinal developments that postdate all four sources.
Webster's 1913 aligns closely with the legal meaning, reflecting how thoroughly the foundational/enactment sense had penetrated general usage by the nineteenth century. The convergence between lay and legal meaning here is unusually tight for a term of this age.
Jurisdictional Note
The constitutional sense of ordain is federal in origin and applies uniformly to interpretation of U.S. constitutional text. The ecclesiastical sense varies by context: federal tax law and federal employment discrimination law (ministerial exception) apply nationally, but state religious corporation statutes and definitions of "ordained minister" differ across jurisdictions and may turn on a particular denomination's own criteria.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Constitutional Authority (foundational enactment power; Article III courts)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Ecclesiastical Law (ordination, ministerial exception, clergy status)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Legislative Power (ordinance, enactment, establishment of courts)