Definition
A unit of liquid measurement equal to one-fourth of a gallon, or two pints. In legal contexts — particularly statutes governing the sale of liquor, milk, grain, and other regulated commodities — the quart served as a standard unit of measure against which quantities were assessed for purposes of taxation, licensing, and fraud prosecution.
The legal significance of the quart is almost entirely historical: it appears in older commercial statutes and penal provisions where selling short measure was a cognizable offense, and in licensing regimes that set minimum or maximum quantities by volume.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A unit of liquid capacity equal to two pints; one-fourth of a gallon. Equivalent to 1.136 liters in the UK and 0.946 liter (liquid quart) or 1.101 liters (dry quart) in the U.S.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The fourth part; a quarter; hence, a region of the earth." (Obs.)
The legal gap here is modest but real: common usage treats the quart as a fixed modern unit, while legal sources — especially older statutes — often presupposed local or imperial standards that differed from one another. A "quart" in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century English licensing statute was not the same volume as a "quart" in a contemporaneous American colonial or state measure law. Researchers working with historical regulatory sources should not assume the quart was a universal constant.
Common Confusion
Bouvier's Law Dictionary includes under the heading "QUART" a substantive entry on quarry law — specifically, the rule that a tenant of a farm with an open quarry may work that quarry but may not open new ones. This appears to be a typographical or editorial error in the original: the quarry entry was misplaced under QUART in at least one edition. Researchers consulting Bouvier's should be alert to this. The quarry rule itself is substantive and is treated separately under QUARRY and MINES in Bouvier's.
Why It Matters in Research
The quart appears in Law Mind's corpus primarily in three contexts:
First, weights and measures statutes. Colonial and early American state legislatures frequently defined legal quantities — for liquor licenses, milk sales, grain transactions — by reference to the quart. Enforcement actions for short measure depended on the statutory definition in force at the time, which varied by jurisdiction and era.
Second, excise and licensing law. Older liquor licensing regimes in both English and American law commonly set thresholds by the quart or pint — for example, distinguishing retail licenses (sales by the quart or less) from wholesale licenses. A researcher tracing the history of a licensing dispute must identify which statutory quart was operative.
Third, the Bouvier's quarry entry collision (discussed under COMMON CONFUSION above) means that anyone using a keyword search for "QUART" in historical legal dictionaries may retrieve quarry law material. This is a corpus-specific trap worth flagging.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical sources agree on the core definition: one-fourth of a gallon. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's give essentially identical language with no substantive divergence on the measurement definition itself.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the divergence between imperial and American standards, dry versus liquid quart distinctions, or the evidentiary questions that arose when a disputed sale was alleged to be short measure. For those questions, researchers will need to look to contemporaneous statutes and treatise material on weights and measures rather than the dictionary definitions alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The U.S. liquid quart (approximately 0.946 liter) and the imperial quart used in English law (approximately 1.136 liters) are not the same volume. Historical statutes and contracts referencing the quart should be read against the applicable jurisdiction's standard measure at the time of enactment or execution.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Weights and Measures.