Definition
A ration is a fixed allotment of a commodity — most commonly food, fuel, or essential supplies — distributed to an individual or group under conditions of scarcity or institutional control. In legal contexts, the term appears in two principal settings:
1. Military and government service. A ration is the daily allowance of food or supplies to which a soldier, sailor, or government employee is entitled by law, regulation, or contract. The entitlement may be in kind (actual food) or commuted (a cash equivalent paid in lieu of physical provisions). Disputes over rations gave rise to claims against the government for unprovided or improperly valued allotments.
2. Wartime and emergency economic regulation. Under emergency powers statutes, governments have authority to ration scarce civilian goods — food, gasoline, rubber, housing — allocating fixed quantities per household or individual. The legal framework for civilian rationing rests on delegated legislative authority to executive agencies and has been sustained as a valid exercise of war powers and police powers.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A portion of some limited resource, especially food, allocated to a person or group.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A fixed daily allowance of provisions assigned to a soldier in the army, or a sailor in the navy, for his subsistence. Hence, a certain portion or fixed amount dealt out; an allowance; an allotment.
The common meaning and the legal meaning are closely aligned in ordinary usage, but the legal term carries additional weight: a ration in law is not merely a practical division of scarce goods but an enforceable entitlement or a governmentally imposed limit backed by statutory authority and subject to adjudication. The gap lies in the legal enforceability and the regulatory machinery attached to the term.
Common Confusion
RATION vs. COMMUTATION OF RATIONS. A ration is the physical allotment itself; commutation of rations is the cash sum paid in lieu of providing the physical ration. Military pay and claims cases frequently turn on whether a servicemember was entitled to rations in kind, commuted rations, or neither — the distinction matters for calculating the value of unpaid government obligations.
RATION vs. SUBSISTENCE ALLOWANCE. In modern military law, "subsistence allowance" has largely displaced "ration" as the operative term for the food entitlement of officers. Researchers should check the period of the source: older statutes and cases use "ration" where contemporary regulations say "basic allowance for subsistence."
Why It Matters in Research
The term shifts in legal significance depending on historical period. Pre-twentieth-century legal materials use "ration" almost exclusively in the military context — government contracts, pay claims, and quartermaster disputes. The word's regulatory dimension expands dramatically during and after World War I, and again during World War II, when civilian rationing programs generated a substantial body of administrative law, price control litigation, and criminal enforcement records.
Researchers working in Bouvier's era (mid-nineteenth century) will find the term embedded in military pension and claims statutes. Researchers working in the 1940s corpus will encounter a different animal entirely: Office of Price Administration regulations, rationing board decisions, and criminal prosecutions for black-market violations.
The historical dictionary entries retrieved for this term are not useful for the word itself — the Bouvier excerpt is a fragment about a bequest to the Smithsonian, and the Black's excerpt is garbled — confirming that neither source treated RATION as a significant term of art requiring its own dictionary treatment. This is itself informative: the term was considered sufficiently plain that its legal content was carried by statutes and regulations rather than common-law elaboration.
For corpus navigation: search "commuted rations," "ration in kind," and "ration allowance" as variant phrasings in military claims materials. For the regulatory period, search alongside "OPA," "price control," and "priorities" to locate the administrative law context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Neither Bouvier's Law Dictionary nor Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides a substantive entry for RATION. The Bouvier fragment in the source material is unrelated (a passage on bequests to the United States government), and the Black's excerpt is corrupted text. The absence of a dedicated entry in either source is consistent with the term's status: it was a word of common meaning applied in legal settings, defined by the governing statute or regulation rather than by common-law development. Researchers should not expect doctrinal elaboration in historical law dictionaries and should go directly to the relevant military pay statutes, appropriations acts, or emergency powers legislation for operative definitions.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal law has historically governed military rations. Civilian rationing programs have been creatures of federal statute under war powers, though states have occasionally enacted their own rationing schemes under police powers during emergencies. In any state-law research context, confirm whether the governing authority is federal or state before applying federal administrative precedents.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The encyclopedia entries flagged (rational basis review in constitutional law) share only a lexical resemblance to this term and are not substantively relevant. No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry on military entitlements, emergency economic regulation, or wartime administrative law is indicated as a match. Omitted accordingly.