Definition
In law, *performed* is the past tense and past participial form of *perform*, used to describe an obligation, duty, or contractual promise that has been carried through, executed, and completed. A party who has *performed* has done what the law or the agreement required of them.
The term appears most heavily in contract law, where performance is the primary mode by which contractual obligations are discharged. To say that a party *has performed* is to say that the conditions triggering the other party's reciprocal obligations have been satisfied — or, depending on context, that the performing party has earned the right to enforce those obligations against the other side.
*Performed* functions descriptively (did the party do what was required?) and legally (does what was done constitute sufficient performance to discharge the obligation or trigger a remedy?). These are related but distinct questions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simple past and past participle of *perform* — to have carried out, executed, or accomplished an action.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913, as quoted in Bouvier's): "To carry through, execute, accomplish, to make complete, to perfect."
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow on its face but consequential in practice. Ordinary usage treats *performed* as binary — something either was done or was not. Legal usage introduces gradations: a party may have *substantially performed*, *partially performed*, *imperfectly performed*, or *fully performed*, each carrying different consequences for rights and remedies. The common understanding that "performed" means "finished" does not map cleanly onto legal doctrine, where incomplete or imperfect performance may still satisfy the legal standard, and perfect completion may still fall short if done in the wrong sequence or without proper tender.
Common Confusion
*Performed* is frequently conflated with *completed* or *discharged*. Performance discharges an obligation, but not every discharge requires performance — obligations can also be discharged by agreement, impossibility, frustration, or breach. Conversely, a party may have *performed* in the legal sense without having *fully completed* every physical act, if the substantial performance doctrine applies. Researchers should also distinguish *performed* from *tendered*: tender is an offer of performance, not performance itself, though wrongful rejection of a proper tender can have legal effects equivalent to actual performance.
Why It Matters in Research
*Performed* is a high-frequency operative word in contracts cases, pleadings, and older legal instruments. Its significance in research lies less in the word itself than in what surrounds it.
**Substantial performance doctrine.** Courts and treatises from the late nineteenth century onward distinguish between full and substantial performance. When reading older cases, watch for whether the court treats "performed" as requiring strict completion or accepting something less. The doctrine developed unevenly across jurisdictions, and what counts as performed in one line of cases may be treated as breach in another.
**Sequence and dependency.** Bouvier's fragment on stipulations — distinguishing between contracts that can be treated as wholly repudiated and those that cannot — points to a critical research issue: whether obligations are independent, dependent, or concurrent conditions. Whether a party has *performed* so as to entitle them to the other side's performance turns on how courts characterize the relationship between the promises. This analysis changed significantly between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
**Pleading formulas.** In older common law pleading, the allegation that plaintiff "has performed all conditions precedent" or "has duly performed" was a required formula. Researchers working with historical pleadings should recognize that *performed* in this context is a term of art, not mere narration, and its absence or imprecision could be fatal to the pleading.
**Passive construction traps.** Statutes and contracts often use passive constructions — "when X has been performed," "if Y is performed by." Identifying *who* performed, *what* was performed, and *whether* performance was timely or proper requires reading the full instrument and surrounding doctrine, not just the word.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's definition is brief and leans on Webster's 1913 for substance: "to carry through, execute, accomplish, to make complete, to perfect." This reflects the dictionary's general practice of treating *performed* as a term derivative of *performance* rather than defining it independently.
The more useful Bouvier's material surfaces in the fragment on contractual stipulations, which addresses the effect of wrongful repudiation where a contract contains multiple promises. The citations there — including English and American authority — illustrate that whether something has been *performed* so as to entitle the performing party to sue was, by the late nineteenth century, already a nuanced question turning on the structure of the contract as a whole, not simply whether physical acts were completed.
What historical dictionaries miss is the doctrinal elaboration that followed: the substantial performance doctrine, the concept of material breach as the dividing line between excuse and continued obligation, and the Restatement treatment of performance conditions. Researchers should treat Bouvier's entry as a starting point that flags the issue without resolving it.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Performance — Tender of Performance (The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)
Performance — Duties and Order of Performance (The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)
Performance — Substantial Performance Doctrine (The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)