Definition
To reject is to refuse to accept, receive, or grant something tendered, proposed, or submitted. In legal contexts, the term operates across several distinct settings:
1. Offer and acceptance (contract formation). A rejection is an offeree's refusal to accept an offer, terminating the offeree's power of acceptance. Once a rejection is communicated to the offeror, the offer is extinguished and cannot later be accepted unless the offeror renews it.
2. Goods under the UCC. Under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, rejection is a buyer's refusal to accept delivery of goods that fail to conform to the contract. Rejection must occur within a reasonable time after delivery or tender, and the buyer must seasonably notify the seller. A rightful rejection preserves the buyer's remedies; a wrongful rejection may itself constitute breach.
3. Pleadings, filings, and applications. Courts and administrative agencies reject filings that are procedurally deficient — unsigned, untimely, submitted in improper form, or lacking required attachments. Rejection in this sense is typically ministerial and does not reach the merits.
4. Prayer or request. In older usage, as reflected in Bouvier, a court may be said to reject a prayer for relief or a requested jury instruction, denying what was asked without necessarily ruling on the underlying right.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To refuse to accept; to forswear. Also used informally for blocking a shot in sports or declining a romantic advance.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To cast from one; to throw away; to discard; to refuse to receive or acknowledge; to repudiate.
The common meaning tracks the legal meaning closely in spirit but misses the technical consequences that attach in legal settings. In contract law, rejection is not merely a refusal — it is a legally operative act that destroys the offer and, if wrongful, can trigger liability. Under the UCC, rejection carries precise procedural requirements; a buyer who informally refuses goods without following the statutory steps may lose the right to reject altogether or inadvertently accept.
Common Confusion
Rejection is frequently confused with two related but distinct concepts:
Rejection vs. revocation. Rejection is an act by the offeree or buyer; revocation is an act by the offeror or seller. An offeror revokes; an offeree rejects. Mixing these up in historical sources is common and can obscure who bears legal responsibility for terminating an agreement.
Rejection vs. revocation of acceptance (UCC). Under UCC Article 2, rejection occurs before acceptance. Once a buyer has accepted goods, the remedy is revocation of acceptance under §2-608, not rejection. The two carry different requirements and different burdens. Historical sources and older treatises sometimes use "rejection" loosely to cover both, which can mislead researchers working with pre-UCC materials.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "reject" appears throughout the Law Mind corpus with surface consistency but varying legal weight depending on context. Three research traps stand out.
First, the UCC shift. Pre-UCC contract materials use "rejection" in a general sense that does not map onto the structured UCC framework. When researching buyer remedies in goods transactions, researchers must identify whether the source predates Article 2 and whether the jurisdiction had adopted the UCC at the relevant time. The technical Article 2 requirements — timeliness, notice, duties upon rejection — are absent from common law treatments.
Second, offer termination vs. goods rejection. These are conceptually separate doctrines that share vocabulary. A case discussing "rejection of an offer" in a services contract is governed by common law formation rules, not UCC Article 2. Corpus searches on "rejection" will surface both without distinguishing them. Researchers should filter by transactional context.
Third, procedural rejection. Court clerk rejections of filings and administrative agency rejections of applications are often conflated with substantive denials in secondary sources. A rejected filing has not been adjudicated; a denied motion has. Older case law sometimes uses "rejected" and "denied" interchangeably, obscuring whether a merits ruling was made.
The encyclopedia connections in the Law Mind corpus reflect this split: one entry covers offer termination at common law; the other covers the UCC Article 2 framework specifically. Researchers should consult both when the transactional context is unclear.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's definition — "to throw away; to discard; to refuse to receive; to refuse to grant; as to reject a prayer or request" — captures the term's breadth but offers no differentiation among contexts. The citation to a Kentucky case (94 Ky. 302) suggests usage in a pleadings or equitable relief context. Bouvier does not address the offer-termination doctrine or anything resembling the UCC framework, reflecting the pre-uniform-law era in which the dictionary was written.
Webster's 1913 reinforces the core sense of active refusal and repudiation, but again without legal consequence. The historical dictionaries agree on the ordinary meaning and are largely silent on doctrine. Researchers using Bouvier as a primary source for the legal mechanics of rejection in contract or commercial law will find it insufficient — it signals the concept but not the framework.
Jurisdictional Note
The UCC Article 2 rejection framework (§§2-601 through 2-608) has been adopted in substantially similar form across nearly all U.S. jurisdictions, but Louisiana's partial adoption and ongoing state-by-state variations in official amendments mean researchers should verify the operative version. In international sales governed by the CISG, analogous rules apply under a different structure and terminology.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Contracts: Termination of Offer (Revocation, Rejection, Counteroffer, Lapse, Death) — Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia (contracts_4)
UCC Article 2: Acceptance, Rejection, and Revocation of Acceptance (§§2-601 through 2-608) — Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia (contracts_125)