RECESS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

RECESSAuthored

The Law Mind • 863 words

Definition

A temporary suspension of proceedings or business, with the expectation of resuming. RECESS carries distinct meanings depending on context:

Judicial recess. A short interval during which a court suspends its proceedings without formally adjourning. The session continues; the court has merely paused. A recess differs from adjournment in that no new session begins when business resumes — the same session simply continues.

Legislative recess. An interval between sittings of a legislative body during the same continuous session, resulting from adjournment to a fixed date. Distinct from the interval between sessions of different legislative bodies (i.e., between the end of one Congress or legislature and the convening of the next). This distinction carries constitutional weight in the United States, particularly in the context of the President's power to make recess appointments.

Constitutional recess (U.S.). For purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause (Art. II, §2, cl. 3 of the U.S. Constitution), whether a legislative body is "in recess" determines whether the executive may make appointments without Senate confirmation. Modern constitutional litigation has sharpened the definition considerably beyond what Black's 2nd Ed. preserves.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Of a place or time — distant, remote; also, a recessed physical space (an alcove or indentation); and, in everyday use, a break in activity, as in a school recess.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A withdrawing or retiring; a moving back; retreat. Also, a state of seclusion or withdrawal from activity. Hale's usage — "in the recess of the jury" — is a direct ancestor of the procedural legal meaning.

The legal term maps reasonably onto the common meaning of a break or pause, but the legal distinction between recess and adjournment — and between intrasession and intersession recess for constitutional purposes — has no meaningful counterpart in ordinary English. Everyday speakers treat any pause in proceedings as a recess; the law treats that pause's formal character as determinative.

Common Confusion

Recess vs. adjournment. The terms are frequently conflated. An adjournment terminates a session; a recess merely suspends it. The distinction matters procedurally because pending matters, quorum requirements, and deadlines may be affected differently depending on which occurred. In legislative practice, confusion between intrasession recess (same session, adjourned to a date certain) and intersession recess (gap between different Congresses or legislative sessions) can lead to serious research errors, particularly when examining the scope of executive appointment power.

Why It Matters in Research

Legislative corpus research. Black's 2nd Ed. preserves the 19th-century understanding of legislative recess as an intrasession interval. Researchers working with historical congressional documents, presidential messages, or Senate records should be alert to the fact that the constitutional scope of the Recess Appointments Clause was actively contested and substantially clarified in the 20th and 21st centuries. Older sources may not reflect the intrasession/intersession distinction with the precision required for modern constitutional analysis.

Judicial corpus research. Court records, docket entries, and transcripts routinely note recesses. In historical sources, recess notations may appear without clarification of whether an adjournment followed. Researchers dating proceedings, calculating deadlines, or reconstructing trial sequences should verify whether a noted recess ended the day's session or merely interrupted it.

Recess appointments. Any research touching the President's recess appointment power requires careful attention to which definition of recess is operative. The constitutional meaning has been substantially developed through litigation. Primary source materials from earlier periods may use "recess" loosely in ways that predate the doctrinal precision now required.

Jurisdictional variation in court practice. State court rules differ on how recesses are formally noted, whether they toll deadlines, and how they interact with statutory time limits. Historical state practice may diverge significantly from modern procedure.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's 2nd Ed. provides two definitions — judicial and legislative — that remain accurate as baseline descriptions. The judicial definition (a suspension without adjournment, citing In re Gannon) is straightforward and consistent with modern usage. The legislative definition is more important and more incomplete: the entry begins to articulate the intrasession/intersession distinction but the surviving text is truncated, cutting off before completing the explanation.

Webster's 1913 is useful here for confirming that the legal meaning descended naturally from the common meaning of withdrawal or stepping back — Sir Matthew Hale's reference to "the recess of the jury" in the context of deliberation shows the term operating in a legal-adjacent sense as early as the 17th century.

What the historical dictionaries miss: neither Black's 2nd Ed. nor Webster's addresses the constitutional dimension of recess as it would later be developed. Researchers relying solely on historical dictionary authority for the constitutional meaning of recess will find the record materially incomplete.

Jurisdictional Note

The judicial meaning of recess is substantially uniform across U.S. jurisdictions, though procedural consequences vary by local rule. The constitutional meaning of legislative recess is a matter of federal law and applies specifically to Congress; state legislatures have their own constitutional and statutory frameworks governing recesses and interim appointments, which differ considerably from the federal model.

RECESSmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In the practice of the courts, a recess is a short interval or period of time during which the court suspends business, but without adjourning. See In re Gannon, 69 Cal. 541, 11 Pac. 240. In legislative practice, a recess is the ‘interval, occurring in consequence of an adjournment, between the sessions of the same continuous legislative body; not the interval between the final adjournment of one body and the convening ot another at the next regular session. See Tipton v. Parker, 71 Ark. 193, 74 8S. W. 298.

RECESSn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

A withdrawing or retiring; a moving back; retreat; as, the recess of the tides. Every degree of ignorance being so far a recess and degradation from rationality. South. My recess hath given them confidence that I may be conquered. Eikon Basilike. The state of being withdrawn; seclusion; privacy. In the recess of the jury they are to consider the evidence. Sir M. Hale. Good verse recess and solitude requires. Dryden. Remission or suspension of business or procedure; intermission, as of a legislative body, court, or school. The recess of . . . Parliament lasted six weeks. Macaulay. Part of a room formed by the receding of the wall, as an alcove, niche, etc. A bed which stood in a deep recess. W. Irving. A place of retirement, retreat, secrecy, or seclusion. Departure from his happy place, our sweet Recess, and only consolation left. Milton. Secret or abstruse part; as, the difficulties and recesses of science. I. Watts. A sinus.

RECESSv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

To make a recess in; as, to recess a wall.

RECESSn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

A decree of the imperial diet of the old German empire. Brande & C.

recessadj

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Of a place or time: distant, remote.

recessverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

To position (something) a distance behind another thing; to set back. | To make a recess (noun noun sense 1 and noun sense 1.1) in (something). | Often preceded by in or into: to inset (something) into a recess or niche. | To conceal, to hide. | To temporarily suspend (a meeting, the proceedings of an official body, etc.). | To make a recess appointment in respect of (someone). | Of a meeting, the proceedings of an official body, etc.: to adjourn, to take a break. | Of an official body: to suspend proceedings for a period of time.

recessnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

A depressed, hollow, or indented space; also, a hole or opening. | A depressed, hollow, or indented space; also, a hole or opening. | A small space created by building part of a wall further back from the rest; a niche. | A depressed, hollow, or indented space; also, a hole or opening. | The place in a prison where the communal lavatories are located. | A hidden, innermost, or inaccessible place or part of a place. | A hidden, innermost, or inaccessible place or part of a place. | A place of retirement, retreat, or seclusion. | A hidden, innermost, or inaccessible place or part of a place. | An obscure, remote, or secret situation. | A temporary stoppage of an activity; a break, a pause. | A temporary stoppage of an activity; a break, a pause. | A period of time when the proceedings of a committee, court of law, parliament, or other official body are temporarily suspended. | A temporary stoppage of an activity; a break, a pause. | A time away from studying during the school day for a meal or recreation. | An act of retiring or withdrawing; a moving back. | A decree or resolution of the diet of the Holy Roman Empire or the Hanseatic League. | An act of retiring or withdrawing from public life, society, etc.; also, an act of living in retirement or seclusion, or a period of such retirement or seclusion. | Leisure, relaxation. | The state of being withdrawn. | A departure from a norm or position. | A time interval during which something ceases; an interruption, a respite. | An overall-concave, reentrant section of a sinuous fold and thrust belt, thrust sheet, or a single thrust fault, caused by one or more of: deformation (folding and faulting) of strata and geologic structures during orogenesis, differences in the angle of critical taper during orogenesis, or differing erosional level of the present geomorphological surface. | An extension or outpouching of a cavity (e.g. articular recess, peritoneal recess,...)

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