Definition
A "pocket record" is an archaic term for a statute or legislative enactment. The name derives from the practice of recording or enrolling parliamentary acts in a compact or abbreviated form — a "pocket" version of the formal record — as distinguished from a fuller or more ceremonious enrollment. Both Black's and Burrill's offer only the bare identification: it is a statute "so called," with the single citation to Brownlow's Reports (Part 2, p. 81) as the locus of usage. The term does not carry technical elements in the way a modern legal term of art would; it is best understood as a period label for a class of legislative document rather than a freestanding legal concept.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Pocket" as an adjective connotes something small, portable, or abbreviated — a reduced version of a larger thing. "Record" in ordinary usage refers to any preserved account or document.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Record" is defined as "a register; an official contemporaneous writing by which the acts of some public body or public officer are recorded." "Pocket" as a modifier suggests something compact or condensed.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is largely a matter of obsolescence rather than contradiction. A modern reader encountering "pocket record" might assume a casual or informal document — perhaps a personal note or condensed log. The legal term, by contrast, referred specifically to a formal statutory instrument, albeit one enrolled or preserved in an abbreviated manner. The informality implied by "pocket" is misleading: this was an official record of enacted law.
Common Confusion
POCKET RECORD vs. POCKET VETO: These terms share only the modifier "pocket" and are entirely unrelated. A pocket veto is a constitutional mechanism by which an executive withholds signature from a bill during a legislative recess, causing the bill to fail without an affirmative veto. A pocket record is an enrolled statute. Researchers searching constitutional or executive-power materials should not conflate the two; they inhabit entirely different doctrinal spaces.
POCKET RECORD vs. ENROLLED BILL: The enrolled bill is the formal, authoritative engrossed copy of a statute as passed and signed. The pocket record appears to have been a more abbreviated or summary recording of the same legislative act. Whether the two were legally equivalent in force is not addressed by the available sources.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a historical artifact. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in early English legal materials — specifically the seventeenth-century reports and pleading records from which both Black's and Burrill's drew their sole citation. Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the term does not appear in modern statutory or administrative law. If a modern source uses the phrase "pocket record," it is either quoting or paraphrasing an older source, or using the phrase colloquially in a non-legal sense. Neither usage carries doctrinal weight.
Second, the sole cited authority — Brownlow's Reports, Part 2, page 81 — is the entire evidentiary foundation for this entry across both historical dictionaries. Both Black's and Burrill's reproduce the same citation verbatim, suggesting neither conducted independent verification beyond the common source. Researchers seeking to understand the term in context should go directly to Brownlow rather than relying on these derivative descriptions.
Third, the term may surface in historical chain-of-title research or in disputes over the authority of early colonial or English statutes, where questions about the form and completeness of statutory enrollment occasionally arose. In that context, distinguishing between a "pocket record" (abbreviated enrollment) and a full parliamentary roll could have practical significance for whether a given act was treated as validly recorded.
Fourth, researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on recording acts, statutory construction, or legislative history should note that this term predates the modern American recording system entirely. It belongs to English parliamentary procedure, not to the land records or deed registry framework that dominates modern real estate research.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement — both define pocket record as simply "a statute so called" and both cite only Brownlow, Part 2, p. 81. This convergence reflects a common source rather than independent corroboration. Neither dictionary elaborates on the form the abbreviation took, the occasions on which pocket records were used instead of full enrollments, or whether they carried the same legal force as a fully enrolled statute. The historical dictionaries, in other words, preserve the label but shed almost no light on the substance. This is a case where the dictionary sources have reached the limits of their usefulness and the researcher must consult the primary source directly.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia, constitutional_37: The Veto Power — Line-Item Veto, Pocket Veto, and Constitutional Limits (useful for distinguishing the unrelated "pocket veto" concept and avoiding confusion between the two "pocket" terms).