Definition
RECORD has several distinct legal meanings depending on context. The unifying thread is the idea of an official, authoritative written account — one that exists for purposes of permanence, proof, or public notice.
1. Court Record. The official written account of proceedings in a judicial tribunal. The record includes the pleadings, process, verdict, and judgment — everything formally entered before the court. It is distinguished from mere evidence introduced at trial, which may or may not be incorporated into the record proper. On appeal, the appellate court ordinarily reviews only what appears in the record below; matters outside the record are generally not cognizable.
2. Public Record. Any document required or authorized by law to be created and maintained by a government officer or agency for public reference. Deeds, mortgages, liens, vital records, and court judgments are the most common examples. The defining feature is that the public is charged with constructive notice of the document's contents once it has been properly filed and indexed.
3. Criminal Record. The cumulative official account of a person's prior arrests, charges, convictions, and dispositions maintained by law enforcement and court authorities. A criminal record is distinct from a court record in the narrow sense: it aggregates information across multiple proceedings and is used in contexts ranging from sentencing to employment background checks.
4. Record (Administrative and Legislative). The official transcript, minutes, or documented proceedings of an administrative agency or legislative body. Administrative records are central to judicial review of agency action, as courts typically confine their review to the record compiled during the agency proceeding.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A record is a written account of something preserved for future reference; also, in informal usage, a person's past history of conduct or achievement.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "An authentic official copy of any writing, or account of acts and proceedings, committed to writing, as evidence of them; something written to perpetuate knowledge of acts or events."
The gap between common and legal meaning lies primarily in legal consequence. In common usage, a record is simply a preserved account. In law, a record triggers specific rights and obligations: constructive notice (in real property), the scope of appellate review (in litigation), and collateral consequences (in criminal matters). Whether something has been formally "of record" — properly filed, indexed, or entered — determines whether those consequences attach. The ordinary language sense captures the archival function; the legal sense adds a framework of duties and effects that the word alone does not suggest.
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Common Confusion
Record vs. Transcript vs. Docket. These terms are often used loosely as synonyms but are not interchangeable. The record is the formal compilation of all papers and proceedings in a case. The transcript is specifically the verbatim written account of oral proceedings before the court. The docket is the court's running index or log of filings and proceedings. A transcript may or may not be part of the record depending on whether it has been certified and filed. Neither transcript nor docket is itself the full record.
Record vs. Report. In administrative law, agencies sometimes publish formal reports distinct from the administrative record. The administrative record is the body of materials before the agency at the time of its decision; a report may summarize findings without constituting the complete record for purposes of judicial review.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
- Record on Appeal: The specific portion of the trial court record designated and transmitted to the appellate court. Governed by procedural rules specifying what must be included and how designation occurs.
- Public Record (Real Property): A document that has been duly recorded with the appropriate government office (typically a county recorder or register of deeds), giving constructive notice to subsequent purchasers and encumbrancers.
- Record Title: Title to real property as it appears from the instruments recorded in the chain of title, without reference to equitable interests or unrecorded claims.
- Matter of Record: Any fact or statement formally entered into the official proceedings of a court, as distinguished from matter in pais (established by parol evidence or conduct outside the record).
- Criminal Record: See Definition §3 above. Subject to potential sealing, expungement, or other forms of record clearing under applicable law.
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Why It Matters in Research
The word "record" is one of the most contextually unstable terms in the legal corpus. A researcher must identify which sense — court record, public record, criminal record, administrative record — is operative before the surrounding doctrine becomes coherent.
In appellate practice, the scope of the record is jurisdictionally significant. Historical sources will speak of "the record" as the formal roll in common law courts — an extremely narrow concept that excluded most of what modern litigants would call the record. That historical usage persists in formulations like "error appearing on the face of the record" (a certiorari ground), which has a much more restricted meaning than the same phrase might suggest to a modern reader.
In real property research, "record" carries the specific meaning of a document formally filed and indexed under the recording acts. The distinction between recorded and unrecorded instruments is the foundational axis of priority disputes. Pre-recording-act sources (and sources from jurisdictions with different filing systems) use "record" loosely and cannot be relied upon for doctrine about constructive notice.
In criminal law, the term bifurcates further: the court record of a specific case is distinct from the criminal record as a biographical accumulation. Researchers working on expungement, sealing, or collateral consequences must be precise about which they mean. Laws authorizing expungement of a criminal record typically do not render the underlying court record nonexistent — they restrict access or prohibit use, which is a different legal operation entirely.
In administrative law, the administrative record is the boundary of judicial review under the arbitrary-and-capricious standard. Whether particular documents are "in the record" before the agency has been extensively litigated. Historical dictionary definitions predate administrative law as a developed field and offer no useful guidance on this point.
Corpus researchers should also watch for "of record" as a phrase: attorney of record, owner of record, holder of record. Each carries specific procedural or property implications, and the phrase appears across multiple subject-matter areas in ways that can mislead cross-domain searches.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define record as the memorial of a court — the formal written account of all proceedings before a court of record, from the commencement of suit to its conclusion, including the judgment. They emphasize that courts of record derive their defining character from the fact that their proceedings are formally enrolled and carry conclusive authority. A court not of record has no such permanent memorial, and its proceedings cannot be proved in the same manner.
This emphasis on courts of record versus courts not of record reflects the historical constitutional and jurisdictional significance the distinction once carried in English and early American law. That framing is less operationally important in modern American practice, where the distinction has largely collapsed or been codified differently, but it remains essential for reading older authorities. When historical sources ask whether a court is "a court of record," they are asking a question with substantive implications about what relief it could grant, how its judgments could be collaterally attacked, and what evidentiary weight its proceedings carried.
Rapalje & Lawrence do not address the public records context (recording of deeds) or the criminal record context as developed concepts — consistent with the state of law in their era, when the recording acts were still evolving and criminal records as administrative instruments had not yet taken their modern form. This is a meaningful gap: the historical dictionary is useful for the courts-of-record doctrine but unreliable as a guide to modern recording-act doctrine or criminal records law.
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Jurisdictional Note
Recording acts — which determine the legal effect of recording a document in the real property context — vary significantly across states. The three main systems (race, notice, and race-notice) produce different outcomes for competing claimants. Researchers should not assume uniformity. In the criminal records context, eligibility for expungement or sealing, and the legal effect of those remedies, is almost entirely a matter of state law and varies widely.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Recording — Priority, Indexing, and the Effect of Recording on Third Parties (Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia): Covers the constructive notice effects of recorded instruments, priority disputes under the recording acts, and indexing requirements.
Expungement, Sealing, and Record Clearing (Criminal Law Encyclopedia): Covers the legal mechanisms for limiting access to criminal records and the effect of those remedies on collateral consequences.
Juvenile Records — Confidentiality and Sealing (Criminal Law Encyclopedia): Covers the special confidentiality and sealing rules applicable to juvenile court records, distinct from general criminal record clearing.
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