Definition
One who resorts to a place; a frequenter or habitual visitor. In historical English legal usage, a resorter was a person who regularly attended, visited, or made use of a particular place — a meaning that carried practical legal weight in contexts ranging from nuisance law to the regulation of gaming houses, alehouses, and disorderly establishments. A premises "resorted to" by certain persons could attract legal liability for its keeper, and a resorter was the person whose presence contributed to that designation.
The term does not carry a settled technical meaning in modern American law. Its legal significance is almost entirely historical, rooted in English common law and early statutory contexts where the character of a place was partly defined by the character of those who frequented it.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who resorts or has recourse to something; a frequenter; a tourist or holidayer; a person who runs a resort.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who resorts; a frequenter.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrow in one direction and significant in another. Colloquially, a resorter today most readily suggests a vacationer at a resort hotel — a meaning entirely absent from the historical legal context. In legal usage, the resorter was not a leisure traveler but a habitual attendee of a particular establishment, and the legal weight fell not on the resorter's own conduct but on what the resorter's presence revealed about the nature of the place. A disorderly house was partly defined as such by the class of resorters it attracted.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "resorter" in historical sources — particularly English case law, treatises on nuisance, or early American criminal statutes targeting gaming houses and bawdy houses — should understand that the term is doing descriptive and legal work simultaneously. The identity and character of resorters was evidence going to the character of the establishment itself, which in turn determined the keeper's criminal liability.
The term virtually disappears from American legal usage by the late nineteenth century. Modern statutes and cases use language like "patron," "frequenter," "habitué," or simply describe the class of persons by conduct (gamblers, prostitutes, vagrants). If a researcher is working with pre-1900 nuisance law, criminal law, or licensing materials, resorter may appear without definition, on the assumption that the reader understood the term. Treat it as roughly equivalent to "habitual frequenter of [the establishment in question]."
Burrill's entry for RESORTER is truncated in the source material available here, cutting off into the entry for RESPECTARE. Researchers relying on Burrill should verify they have a complete edition, as the entry may contain additional context not captured in partial reproductions.
The encyclopedia connection to last-resort immigration relief is terminological coincidence only. The legal concept of "last resort" in immigration — exhaustion of ordinary remedies before seeking private bill relief or deferred action — is unrelated to the historical English law term resorter. Do not conflate them.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary treats RESORTER in the context of Law French usage, where the root verb carries meanings including "to go back," "to resort to" (as in adopting a legal proceeding on failure of others), and simply "to go." Burrill cites Britton (Britt. c. 119 and c. 46) for the verbal forms, and Dyer 135b for the bare sense of motion or direction. The noun form "resorter" as a person who frequents a place follows naturally from this verbal root but is not extensively theorized in Burrill — consistent with its status as a descriptive term whose meaning was assumed to be self-evident from context.
Historical legal dictionaries generally agree that the term's legal force was indirect: a resorter was legally significant not in themselves but as a marker of the establishment they frequented. What the dictionaries do not address — and what later legal development makes clear — is that this evidentiary function eventually became codified in specific offense definitions (keeping a house resorted to by disorderly persons, etc.), giving "resorter" a quasi-technical role in the elements of particular crimes even while remaining an ordinary English word.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term is most firmly rooted in English common law and early American jurisdictions that followed English criminal law conventions closely. It does not appear with any regularity in modern statutory codes. Researchers working in Louisiana (civil law tradition) or in jurisdictions with early comprehensive criminal code revisions should not expect to find the term at all.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Immigration Law Encyclopedia — Private Bills and Deferred Action: Last-Resort Immigration Relief. Note: The connection is terminological only. That entry addresses "last resort" as a standard governing exceptional immigration relief, not the historical English law concept of resorter as frequenter of a place.
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