Definition
In legal usage, REGARD carries several distinct meanings depending on context, ranging from administrative supervision to interpretive direction to relational reference.
1. Inspection or supervision (forest law). In old English forest law, "regard" denoted the official oversight of a royal forest — the act of inspecting and reporting on the forest's condition, including its timber, game, and the activities of those who held rights within it. This was a formal administrative function, not merely casual observation.
2. Reward, fee, or perquisite. In older legal usage, "regard" could mean a payment, allowance, or perquisite — something given or received in recognition of service or status. This sense appears in medieval records and older pleading contexts.
3. Reference or relation (French law influence). Drawn from the Law French "regarder," the term appears in older instruments and reports to mean reference or relation — as in "with regard to," which in formal instruments created a connection or cross-reference between provisions.
4. Esteem or consideration (equitable and interpretive contexts). In equitable drafting and judicial interpretation, to "have regard to" a factor means to give it weight or attention in analysis. Statutes and instruments frequently direct decision-makers to "have regard to" specified considerations, a phrasing with specific interpretive significance.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To look at or observe; to consider something in a given way; to hold someone in esteem; to take notice of; to concern or relate to.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To keep in view; to behold; to observe attentively; to notice or remark particularly.
The gap between common and legal meaning is meaningful in two directions. First, the forest-law sense — formal administrative inspection by a designated officer — has no counterpart in ordinary speech. Second, statutory phrases like "shall have regard to" or "without regard to" carry precise interpretive weight in legal analysis that the ordinary sense of noticing or considering does not capture. A researcher reading "the court shall have regard to all the circumstances" is not reading mere encouragement to pay attention; the phrase signals a structured discretionary obligation.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
REGARD OF THE FOREST: The formal office and exercise of inspecting a royal forest. Conducted by the regarder, it involved traversing the entire forest and its bailiwicks, examining encroachments, waste, and the condition of game. The findings were presented to the justice in eyre of the forest.
COURT OF REGARD: A forest tribunal convened every three years for the lawing or expeditation of dogs — the removal of three toes from the forefeet of large dogs kept within forest bounds — to prevent them from running down deer. Authority rested in the forest jurisdiction of the Crown.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "regard" in at least three corpus contexts that require different reading strategies.
First, in forest law materials, "regard" is a technical term of art tied to a specific administrative office. A document referencing "the regard" or "a regarder" is describing an institutional function, not a vague act of supervision. Burrill's cross-reference to "Regardum" signals that the Latin form appears in original records; researchers working from Latin forest pleas or eyres should track both forms.
Second, in statutory and regulatory materials — particularly British and Commonwealth sources, but also American administrative law — "have regard to" and "without regard to" are operative phrases with significant interpretive histories. "Have regard to" typically imposes a duty to consider but not necessarily to follow; "without regard to" signals that a factor must be excluded from analysis entirely. Confusing these with each other, or treating them as stylistic variants of simple consideration, produces interpretive error.
Third, the "reward/perquisite" sense of regard appears in medieval and early modern records in ways that can confuse researchers expecting only the supervisory meaning. Payment records, household accounts, and feudal tenure documents may use "regard" where a modern reader would expect "fee" or "allowance."
The two Black's editions are largely consistent but the second edition's entry is partially garbled in the corpus (the "Court of Regard" description references "putida 2 or tation" — an obvious transcription or OCR error). Researchers relying on the second edition for this entry should treat it as supplementary to the first edition, not authoritative on its own.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most complete treatment, tracing both the Law French root (regarder — to look to or look at) and the Latin forms (regardum, rewardum), and correctly distinguishing the reference/relation sense from the inspection sense from the fee/perquisite sense. The cross-reference to Manwood and Cowell situates the forest-law meaning in the standard authorities on English forest law.
Both Black's editions treat "regard" primarily as a forest-law term, with brief notice of the reward/fee sense. Neither edition addresses the statutory and equitable "have regard to" usage, which is understandable given that this interpretive idiom became most significant in the twentieth century with the expansion of administrative law and structured discretion.
All three historical dictionaries agree on the core forest-law content: regard as inspection, the regarder as the officer, and the Court of Regard as a three-year tribunal for the expeditation of dogs. The Cowell citation (John Cowell's Interpreter, 1607) appears in both Black's editions as the supporting authority for the Court of Regard, and Manwood's Treatise of the Forest Laws is the standard underlying authority for the forest-inspection sense.
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Jurisdictional Note
The forest-law senses are exclusively English in origin and appear in historical English and early American materials drawing on English common law. The "have regard to" statutory formulation is most developed in British, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand law. American statutory drafting less commonly employs this specific phrase, though the interpretive issue arises whenever a statute directs decision-makers to consider enumerated factors.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Forest Law (for the Court of Regard and the office of regarder in context); Courts of Special Jurisdiction (for the relationship of forest tribunals to the broader jurisdictional structure of English law).
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