Definition
A procession is an organized, ordered movement of persons through a public space — typically a street, road, or public way — for ceremonial, religious, political, or expressive purposes. The legal significance of a procession turns primarily on its public nature: participants advance along routes shared with the general public, which creates potential conflicts with traffic, public order statutes, and the rights of others to use the same space.
In public law contexts, the term is most commonly encountered in connection with the right of assembly, freedom of expression, and municipal licensing or permitting schemes. A procession is lawful when it is peaceable, does not obstruct the public way beyond what is ordinarily incidental to such an event, and does not provoke or invite disorder through the unlawful conduct of its participants.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A group of people or things moving along in an orderly, stately, or solemn manner; a train of persons advancing in order.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of proceeding, moving on, advancing, or issuing; regular, orderly, or ceremonious progress; a train of persons advancing in order; a ceremonious train; a retinue.
The common and legal meanings are largely continuous here, but the legal definition carries a specific normative weight that the common meaning does not. In law, a procession is not merely a descriptive fact — it is a legal category that triggers questions of right, permission, and liability. Whether a given gathering qualifies as a procession (rather than a mob, an unlawful assembly, or an obstruction) determines the legal protections and penalties that attach to it.
Common Confusion
PROCESSION vs. ASSEMBLY: Anderson's Dictionary of Law cross-references procession to ASSEMBLY without independent elaboration, which signals that historical legal sources did not always treat these as distinct categories. The practical distinction is one of movement: an assembly is stationary, a procession is mobile. This matters for research because statutes and ordinances often regulate them under different provisions, and constitutional doctrine has applied differently to moving versus stationary gatherings. Do not assume a source's treatment of assembly automatically extends to procession, or vice versa.
PROCESSION vs. RIOT / UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY: Bouvier's treatment implicitly draws this line. A procession is peaceable and lawful; it becomes an unlawful assembly or riot when participants engage in violence or threat of force. The critical distinction in historical cases was often whether lawless opposition from bystanders could convert an otherwise lawful procession into an unlawful one — a question that generated significant tension in English and American courts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter the term procession most heavily in three contexts: (1) nineteenth-century English and American cases involving religious and political marches, including confrontations between marching groups and hostile crowds; (2) municipal ordinance and licensing cases, where the question is whether a permit scheme unlawfully conditions the exercise of a constitutional right; and (3) civil rights-era litigation, where procession intersects with the constitutional law of assembly, speech, and petition.
The Bouvier entry's reference to the Salvation Army is historically significant. English courts in the 1880s grappled with whether Salvation Army marches could be suppressed because their presence provoked counter-demonstrations by the "Skeleton Army." These cases — decided in English quarter sessions and reviewed on appeal — were influential in early American constitutional thinking about the heckler's veto problem, which remains live doctrine today.
Trap for researchers in historical sources: Bouvier's entry is incomplete as reproduced here (the final sentence is cut off). The full passage addressed whether knowledge of likely lawless interference by third parties could render a procession unlawful on the part of its organizers. This doctrine — that a speaker or marcher bears responsibility for foreseeable disorder — was contested in the nineteenth century and has largely been rejected in modern First Amendment doctrine. Do not read historical sources on this point as reflecting current law.
A second trap: ordinance-based restrictions on processions were not uniformly subjected to constitutional scrutiny in the nineteenth century. The incorporation of the First Amendment against state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment is a twentieth-century development. Historical cases upholding permit requirements or bans on street processions are not reliable guides to modern constitutional outcomes.
Jurisdictional variation matters here: some states have their own constitutional assembly and expression provisions that offer broader protection than federal First Amendment doctrine. When researching procession-related restrictions, check the relevant state constitution.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law offers no independent definition, directing the reader to ASSEMBLY. This cross-reference without elaboration reflects the historical tendency to treat procession as a subtype of assembly rather than a freestanding legal category.
Bouvier's is more substantive. It identifies the core legal proposition — a peaceable, non-obstructing procession on a public street is not an indictable offense — and supports it with a North Carolina case (72 N.C. 25). The Salvation Army reference gestures toward the most contested edge: what happens when a lawful procession is met with unlawful opposition. Bouvier's formulation that such a procession "has been held lawful" implies that courts had to work to reach this result against arguments that anticipated disorder should condemn the march.
Neither dictionary addresses the permitting dimension, the expressive content of processions, or the constitutional framework that modern researchers will need. Both sources reflect an era when the primary question was criminal liability, not constitutional protection. The affirmative rights framework — under which government must justify restrictions on processions — is largely absent from historical dictionary treatment and must be sourced elsewhere.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, municipal permit requirements for street processions are constitutionally permissible only if they are content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternative channels of communication. Permit schemes that grant excessive discretion to licensing officials have been struck down as prior restraints. State law varies as to procedural requirements, fee structures, and available exemptions, making jurisdiction-specific research essential for any operational question.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Due Process of Law — Substantive Due Process Origins and Framework (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia) [constitutional_57]