Definition
In law, PENDANT (also spelled "pendent") refers primarily to something that is pending, hanging, or appended — most commonly encountered in the compound legal term "pendent jurisdiction" (now codified as supplemental jurisdiction), but also appearing historically in phrases describing things incidental or attached to a principal matter. The term itself is rarely used as a standalone legal noun; its significance in legal research lies almost entirely in its role as a modifier or component of compound legal concepts.
1. Pendent jurisdiction (historical usage): The doctrine by which a federal court, having proper jurisdiction over a federal claim, could also hear related state-law claims arising from the same set of facts, even without an independent basis for federal jurisdiction over those state claims. This usage was the dominant legal sense of "pendant/pendent" before the doctrine was absorbed into the statutory framework of supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1367 (1990).
2. Pendant parties (historical usage): An extension — ultimately rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court — of pendent jurisdiction to cover additional parties who had no independent basis for federal jurisdiction. The distinction between pendent claims and pendant parties was a significant doctrinal battleground in federal courts scholarship through the 1970s and 1980s.
3. General pendant/appendage sense: In older legal usage, "pendant" could describe an attachment or appendage to a document, instrument, or proceeding — something literally or figuratively "hanging from" the principal matter.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A pendant is a hanging ornament, particularly a piece of jewelry worn on a chain around the neck, or more generally anything that hangs as an appendage. Also: one of a pair; a counterpart.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Something which hangs or depends; something suspended; a hanging appendage, especially one of an ornamental character; as to a chandelier or an eardrop; also, an appendix or addition, as to a book."
The gap between common and legal meaning is primarily one of register and spelling. In the common language the word describes a physical hanging object; in law it describes a logical or procedural attachment — something that depends upon or hangs from a principal legal matter. The legal term also frequently appears as "pendent" (with an "e"), a variant that has essentially no common-language currency but is the dominant spelling in legal doctrine.
Common Confusion
PENDANT vs. PENDENT: The spellings are used interchangeably in legal texts, which creates index and search inconsistencies in historical sources. "Pendent" (adjective form, from the Latin pendens) is technically more precise in legal usage — "pendent jurisdiction," "pendent claim" — while "pendant" is the standard English noun for the jewelry or ornament. In practice, courts and treatises used both spellings without consistent distinction. Researchers searching historical databases should run both spellings.
PENDENT JURISDICTION vs. SUPPLEMENTAL JURISDICTION: These are not synonymous in a temporal sense. Pendent jurisdiction was a judge-made doctrine developed through case law. Supplemental jurisdiction is its statutory successor under 28 U.S.C. § 1367, enacted as part of the Judicial Improvements Act of 1990. Sources predating 1990 will use "pendent jurisdiction"; post-1990 sources generally use "supplemental jurisdiction." The underlying concept is continuous, but the legal framework changed.
PENDENT CLAIM vs. PENDANT PARTY: A pendent claim attaches a state-law claim to a federal claim already properly before the court. A pendant party is an additional party — not just an additional claim — sought to be joined under the same logic. Federal courts historically treated these differently, with pendant party jurisdiction being far more restricted.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "pendant" or "pendent" in legal sources face two distinct challenges depending on the era of the material.
In pre-1990 federal practice sources, "pendent jurisdiction" is the operative term for what is now called supplemental jurisdiction. Treatises, law review articles, and judicial opinions from the 1960s through 1989 will use this vocabulary exclusively. If you are researching the history of supplemental jurisdiction or tracing the development of the doctrine, you must search for "pendent" and "pendant" — not just "supplemental" — to capture the full literature.
In post-1990 sources, "pendent jurisdiction" largely disappears from primary sources, though it persists in academic commentary and historical analysis. Statutory research should focus on 28 U.S.C. § 1367 directly.
Bouvier's does not contain a direct entry for "pendant" as a legal term of art, which is itself informative: the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction developed through twentieth-century federal common law, well after Bouvier's primary editions were composed. Historical legal dictionaries generally will not be productive sources for this term's legal meaning. The common-language dictionaries (Webster's, Wiktionary) offer the ornamental and physical meanings but do not illuminate the legal doctrine.
For researchers working in older equity or chancery materials, occasional use of "pendant" to describe attachments or appendages to instruments may appear, but this usage is marginal and context-dependent. It does not constitute a formal term of art in that setting.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not contain a standalone entry for PENDANT as a legal term. The source material provided under this heading cross-references entries for AUTER DROIT and AUTER VIE — terms entirely unrelated to pendant — suggesting the term was not treated as requiring independent definition in Bouvier's framework. This absence is consistent with the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction being a distinctly modern development in federal procedural law, emerging in the twentieth century through judicial construction rather than through the common law heritage that Bouvier's primarily documented.
Webster's 1913 confirms the common-language sense as ornamental and physical, with the secondary meaning of "an appendix or addition" to a book — the closest Webster's comes to the logical-attachment meaning that legal usage developed. This secondary Webster's meaning does provide a bridge: the idea of something appended to or dependent upon a principal thing is conceptually continuous with how courts came to use the term in describing claims that "hang from" a jurisdictional anchor.
No historical legal dictionary in the standard shelf adequately covers the procedural doctrine. Researchers requiring historical depth on pendent jurisdiction should look to federal courts treatises and law review literature rather than to dictionary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Pendent jurisdiction as a doctrine was exclusively a concept in federal court practice — it addressed the jurisdictional reach of Article III courts. State court systems have their own doctrines governing joinder of related claims, but these are not described using the "pendent" terminology. Researchers working in state court materials will not encounter this term as a live jurisdictional concept.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See SUPPLEMENTAL JURISDICTION for the statutory framework that succeeded pendent jurisdiction doctrine. See also FEDERAL QUESTION JURISDICTION for the anchor jurisdiction upon which pendent claims traditionally depended.