Definition
REGULARS carries two distinct meanings in historical legal usage, both now largely displaced by more precise modern terminology.
1. Religious regulars. Clergy or monastics who live under a formal rule (regula) of a recognized religious order and have professed the three canonical vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Contrasted with secular clergy, who serve in the world without taking those vows and are governed by diocesan authority rather than the internal rule of an order. The distinction carried real legal weight in ecclesiastical and canon law contexts, affecting jurisdiction, property rights, and exemptions from ordinary church governance.
2. General rules of court (regulae generales). Court-promulgated rules governing practice and procedure, issued periodically to regulate the administration of litigation. This usage tracks the Latin phrase regulae generales and appears almost exclusively in older English and American common law sources. Modern equivalents are rules of civil procedure, local rules, or standing orders.
A third meaning — thief's argot for a share of stolen goods — appears in criminal cant but is not a term of art in formal legal proceedings.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "regular"; also, in thieves' slang, a share of stolen money or goods.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Persons bound by religious rule; members of a monastic order, as distinguished from secular clergy. Also used colloquially for anything habitual or customary.
The gap matters: The common and Webster's meanings converge reasonably well on the religious sense, but neither captures the procedural usage — regulae generales as court rules — which appears in older legal sources with no common-language parallel. A researcher encountering "regulars" in a 19th-century court document must determine from context whether the reference is to religious persons or to procedural directives. The two meanings share no operational overlap.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Religious regulars (canon law): Members of orders following an approved rule. Distinguished from secular clergy by vow structure, chain of authority, and exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction in certain matters.
Regulae generales (court rules): General rules of court practice and procedure, distinguished from orders made in specific cases. Closest modern analogs are court-wide standing orders or the rules promulgated under rulemaking authority granted by statute or constitutional provision.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter REGULARS almost exclusively in two contexts: historical ecclesiastical law materials and pre-20th-century procedural sources.
In ecclesiastical sources, the regular/secular distinction governed which courts had jurisdiction over a clergyman, whether property held by religious could be alienated, and how dissolution of religious houses affected legal title. When reading 18th- or 19th-century English equity cases or colonial American ecclesiastical records, the term signals that the person described is subject to the internal discipline of a religious order — not merely to ordinary church hierarchy. This affects standing, property capacity, and jurisdictional analysis in those materials.
In procedural sources, regulae generales functions as a term of art pointing to rule-books and court circulars that predate modern codified procedure. Researchers working in pre-Federal Rules of Civil Procedure materials, or in English common law courts before the Judicature Acts, may find references to "regulars" or "general rules" that correspond not to reported decisions but to administrative directives now often held in court archives rather than standard reporters. These can be missed entirely if a researcher searches only case law.
The term has no significant modern usage as a standalone legal term. Modern courts use "rules," "local rules," or "standing orders." Modern canon law retains the regular/secular distinction but uses more precise terminology (religious institutes, secular clergy). Seeing REGULARS in a contemporary legal document is a signal to check whether the drafter is using archaic terminology or referring to something specific in a narrow ecclesiastical or institutional context.
The encyclopedia cross-references here reflect modern usage patterns where "regular" modifies another term: regular Tax Court cases (as opposed to small cases procedures) and regular HOA assessments (as opposed to special assessments). These are not the same as the historical standalone term REGULARS but are the live research contexts where the adjective carries legal weight.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's provide the religious definition with near-identical language, citing Wharton. The second edition adds the three vows explicitly (poverty, chastity, obedience), which is the canonical formulation tracing to the Council of Trent and earlier monastic tradition. Black's also provides a separate entry for REGULAE GENERALES covering the procedural sense, which confirms that the two meanings were understood as distinct even within the same reference work.
Neither edition engages with the criminal argot sense, appropriately treating it as outside formal legal usage. Neither edition addresses the modern derivative uses of "regular" as a modifier (regular assessment, regular proceedings), which have since become important research categories in their own right.
Wharton's citation in Black's is consistent with his treatment of ecclesiastical law subjects. Researchers looking for deeper treatment of the regular/secular distinction in American legal history should note that this was a live issue in disputes over church property following the suppression of religious orders in colonial territories and in post-Revolutionary disestablishment cases.
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Jurisdictional Note
The religious regulars distinction retains operational meaning in canon law and in jurisdictions where the legal status of religious orders affects property ownership, tax exemption, or institutional governance — including several civil law countries and U.S. states with significant Catholic institutional presence. In common law jurisdictions, it is primarily a historical category. The procedural sense (regulae generales) is English in origin and rarely appears in American sources after the mid-19th century.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Tax Court Regular vs Small Cases (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia) — covers the procedural distinction between regular Tax Court proceedings and the small cases (S case) track, where "regular" functions as the operative modifier defining which procedural regime applies.
HOA Assessments — Regular, Special, and Lien Priority (The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia) — covers regular versus special assessments and lien priority rules under super-lien statutes, where "regular" defines the baseline assessment category.
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