Definition
Persons who owe allegiance to and are under the protection of a sovereign or sovereign state. In monarchical systems, subjects are the members of a commonwealth bound to a crown by ties of allegiance, as distinguished from foreigners or aliens. In republican systems, the term largely gives way to "citizen," but "subject" appears in older constitutional documents, treaties, and statutes where it carries equivalent meaning — denoting a person within the political community who is entitled to the state's protection and owes it duties in return.
The term carries two overlapping but distinct senses in legal sources:
1. SUBJECTS AS PERSONS OWING ALLEGIANCE: The primary legal meaning. Members of a political community — whether born within its territory, naturalized, or otherwise incorporated — who stand in a legal relationship of allegiance to the sovereign. This is the sense used in early constitutional and international law texts.
2. SUBJECTS AS PARTIES OR MATTERS: A secondary procedural and drafting sense, referring to the subject matter of an agreement, pleading, or legal instrument. This usage appears in older practice texts and is not specific to political or constitutional law. Rapalje & Lawrence's entry notably conflates the two senses, moving without clear transition from the political definition into a description of arbitration submission agreements — a drafting artifact of the original source that researchers should not treat as a unified legal concept.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "subject" — covering academic disciplines, topics of discussion, grammatical subjects of sentences, or persons under some form of authority.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who is under the authority of a sovereign; also, the matter treated of in a discourse or writing.
The gap between common and legal meaning is real but narrowing. In everyday modern English, "subjects" rarely implies political allegiance; more often it refers to topics or school disciplines. In legal and constitutional texts, particularly those predating the twentieth century, "subjects" carries a precise political meaning — persons bound by allegiance — that is entirely absent from the casual modern use of the word. Researchers reading eighteenth- or nineteenth-century legal materials should not assume "subject" means merely "a person" or "a topic."
Common Confusion
SUBJECTS vs. CITIZENS: In American constitutional law, "citizen" displaced "subject" as the operative term following independence and the Fourteenth Amendment's codification of citizenship. The two terms are not always interchangeable, however. "Citizen" implies full membership in a republican polity; "subject" implies allegiance to a sovereign that may or may not be constitutional. Some early American courts treated the terms as synonymous for jurisdictional purposes. Others drew distinctions. Researchers working in pre-Civil War materials should treat the terms as carrying different valences rather than assuming identity.
SUBJECTS vs. NATIONALS: "Nationals" is a broader category used in international and immigration law to describe persons who owe allegiance to a state but do not necessarily enjoy full civil and political rights of citizenship. The term "subject" in older British imperial usage sometimes covered what modern law would call nationals — persons in territories under the Crown who lacked full rights of British subjects.
Why It Matters in Research
The critical research trap with "subjects" is the temporal and systemic shift in vocabulary. Materials before approximately 1800 — and British-origin materials much later — will use "subjects" where American legal materials from the same period or later use "citizens." When researching early constitutional history, treaty interpretation, choice-of-law problems in colonial-era instruments, or international law questions involving British Commonwealth states, researchers must recognize that "subjects" is the functional predecessor term and search accordingly.
For jurisdictional research in federal courts: the phrase "citizens or subjects" appears in Article III and in diversity jurisdiction statutes, where "subjects of a foreign state" is the operative phrase for foreign nationals seeking access to federal courts. Conflating "subject" with "citizen" in this context can cause researchers to miss relevant diversity jurisdiction analysis.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry for this term is anomalous — it begins with the political definition but then pivots mid-entry into a passage about submission agreements in arbitration. That passage does not belong to the political definition of "subjects" and appears to be a printing or compilation error in the original source. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence for this entry should treat only the first sentence as responsive to the headword.
The secondary sense — subjects as subject matter of agreements — does appear in period legal usage, but it is generic enough that it rarely warrants independent dictionary treatment. When historical sources use "subjects" in this sense, context will almost always clarify that meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define "subjects" as "[t]he members of a commonwealth under a sovereign," and note that when synonymous with "citizens" or "inhabitants," the term was used interchangeably in at least some American federal court decisions. This is historically accurate: early American courts inherited British legal vocabulary and did not immediately or uniformly substitute "citizen" for "subject." The conflation was practical rather than principled.
What Rapalje & Lawrence do not address is the constitutional weight the distinction eventually acquired. The Fourteenth Amendment's affirmative definition of citizenship created a constitutional floor that the common-law concept of subjection never had. A "subject" in common law could be a subject by birth, by conquest, or by long residence — without formal act or grant. "Citizen" in American constitutional law carries more defined legal content. Historical dictionaries generally do not capture this constitutional evolution because most were compiled before or contemporaneously with the period when the shift was occurring.
Jurisdictional Note
In British Commonwealth jurisdictions, "subject" retains current legal significance through concepts like British subject status and Commonwealth citizenship, which are governed by statute. In the United States, "subject" survives primarily in Article III diversity jurisdiction language and in treaty texts; domestic constitutional law operates through the citizenship framework. Researchers working across common-law systems should not assume that "subject" and "citizen" map onto each other cleanly across jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia: Collective Bargaining — Duty to Bargain and Mandatory Subjects (for the distinct usage of "subjects" in the labor law context of mandatory bargaining subjects).
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Estates in Land — Defeasible Fees (for "subject to" as a term of art in property instruments, a usage related to but distinct from the political meaning of subjects).