Definition
"R.A." as it appears in Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is not a standalone defined term but functions as an abbreviation marker within legal citation strings and cross-references embedded in the dictionary's text. In the corpus fragment associated with this entry, "R.A." appears as part of "L.R.A." — the standard abbreviation for Lawyers' Reports Annotated, a widely used American case reporter series published from 1888 through 1918. The fragment does not define R.A. independently; its appearance is incidental to citation chains referencing Brandenburg v. Zeigler and Tampa Waterworks Co. v. Cline.
In the broader historical legal context, "R.A." may appear as an abbreviation in at least two distinct uses:
1. As part of L.R.A. (Lawyers' Reports Annotated): A citation to the annotated reporter series that reprinted leading state and federal cases with extensive editorial annotations. L.R.A. citations were authoritative research shortcuts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and appear throughout Black's 2nd Edition citation strings.
2. Standalone R.A.: Occasionally appears in older English legal texts as shorthand for "Royal Assent" or, in administrative and ecclesiastical contexts, for "Regulae Angliae" or similar Latin formulations — though these uses are rare in American legal sources and absent from Black's 2nd Edition as a defined entry.
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Common Confusion
Researchers encountering "R.A." embedded in citation strings from Black's 2nd Edition should not read it as a standalone term. It is almost invariably the tail fragment of "L.R.A." — the Lawyers' Reports Annotated citation — broken across a line or appearing in abbreviated citation chains. Confusing L.R.A. with other reporter abbreviations (such as L.R., the English Law Reports) is a common research error. L.R.A. is an American series; L.R. is English. They are entirely separate publication lineages and cite to different courts and legal systems.
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Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value here is navigational. When Black's 2nd Edition cites "L.R.A." followed by a volume number and page, researchers should understand:
— L.R.A. ran in three series: the original Lawyers' Reports Annotated (1888–1905), L.R.A. New Series (1905–1914), and L.R.A. 1915–1918. Citations that do not specify "N.S." or a year designation refer to the original series.
— L.R.A. annotations were substantive legal essays synthesizing case law across jurisdictions. Finding the L.R.A. annotation cited by Black's often yields more doctrinal depth than finding the underlying case alone.
— The cases cited in the fragment — Brandenburg v. Zeigler (water rights) and Tampa Waterworks Co. v. Cline (public utilities and water supply) — appear in the context of water law definitions, specifically within the dictionary's treatment of water-related terms. The L.R.A. citations attached to those cases are finding aids to the broader annotated discussions of water rights doctrine in the late nineteenth century.
— Am. St. Rep. (American State Reports), also cited in the same fragment, is a parallel annotated series. Researchers working in late nineteenth-century American common law should treat L.R.A. and Am. St. Rep. as companion finding tools, not interchangeable ones — they selected and annotated different cases.
— The Water-Bailiff cross-reference appearing in the same fragment connects to English port authority law, a line of inquiry entirely separate from the American water rights cases. Black's 2nd Edition frequently clusters loosely related water-law terms, and researchers should follow the "See TIDE" and water-bailiff cross-references as separate research threads.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) does not define R.A. as an independent entry. The abbreviation appears in the source fragment solely as part of citation apparatus. This is consistent with the editorial practice of Black's 2nd Edition, which embeds citation strings within substantive definitions rather than maintaining a separate abbreviations table at the entry level.
The historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus do not treat L.R.A. or R.A. as defined legal terms — they are bibliographic tools, not doctrinal concepts. Bouvier's Law Dictionary, a parallel source, similarly treats reporter abbreviations as implicit rather than defined. Researchers relying on Black's 2nd Edition citations must independently verify which series and edition are meant, as the abbreviation conventions of the period were not fully standardized.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For the substantive water law terms referenced in the surrounding fragment, see the Law Mind Encyclopedia entries on Water Rights and Public Utilities. For citation research methodology involving historical reporters, see the Encyclopedia entry on Legal Research Tools and Historical Reporters.
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