TROOPS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TROOPSAuthored

The Law Mind • 832 words

Definition

Soldiers collectively; a body of soldiers acting or moving together. In legal contexts, the term carries a specific operational meaning: it refers to active military personnel functioning as a unit or detachment, not merely any individual bearing military status. The singular "troop" can refer to a body of soldiers or a cavalry unit; the plural "troops" denotes the collective force.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of troop; soldiers collectively; armed forces personnel generally.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A collection of people; a company; a number of things; soldiers, collectively; an assemblage of persons.

The gap between common and legal usage is meaningful at the margins. In everyday speech, "troops" functions as a loose synonym for "soldiers" or "military personnel" regardless of status or formation. The legal definition, as reflected in Bouvier's, draws a sharper line: troops are soldiers acting as part of a moving body or detachment. Individuals bearing military status but traveling separately — discharged soldiers, rejected applicants, provisionally accepted enlistees not yet sworn in — fall outside the term as a legal matter. A researcher who imports the casual, all-encompassing common meaning into a legal or regulatory text may misread the scope of a provision significantly.

Common Confusion

The most important distinction in the historical sources is between troops and individuals who happen to hold some connection to military service. Bouvier's explicitly excludes discharged soldiers, discharged military prisoners, rejected enlistment applicants, and provisionally accepted applicants not yet sworn in — even when those persons are in transit or on military premises. The word "collectively" is load-bearing: legal usage requires a group character and active military status, not merely past or inchoate association with the armed forces. This distinction mattered in 19th-century rail and transport regulations that extended special rates or rights of way to troops, where the question of who qualified was commercially and administratively significant.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering "troops" in 19th-century statutes, military regulations, transportation law, or constitutional texts should not read the term at its colloquial width. Several research traps present themselves:

First, the collective/individual boundary. Provisions granting rights, exemptions, immunizations from civil process, or transportation preferences to "troops" may not extend to soldiers traveling alone, soldiers recently discharged, or individuals at the margins of military enrollment. Bouvier's list of exclusions reflects real administrative disputes, and the line it draws is not obvious from the word's face.

Second, constitutional dimensions. The Third Amendment's prohibition on quartering "soldiers" in private homes in peacetime uses a different term, but debates about its scope sometimes invoked the concept of troops as organized bodies versus individual soldiers. The distinction between troops as a collective force and soldiers as individuals surfaces in commentary on quartering, impressment, and posse comitatus questions.

Third, the Anderson's entry for TROOPS appears to have been corrupted or misassigned in the source corpus — the text provided describes standards for new trial motions, not military personnel. Researchers using the Anderson's entry in the Law Mind corpus should be aware of this data anomaly and should not rely on the Anderson's text under this headword for substantive content about military law.

Fourth, jurisdictional and temporal variation in military law affects how "troops" is defined in specific regulatory contexts. Federal statutes, military regulations, and state militia laws may each carry their own operative definitions that narrow or expand the Bouvier's baseline.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's provides the most useful period definition, specifying that troops means soldiers collectively as part of a moving body or detachment, and drawing careful exclusions for persons at the fringes of military status. This precision reflects the practical legal disputes of the era — particularly in railroad rate regulation, supply contracts, and military escort law — where the question of who counted as "troops" for purposes of a statutory benefit or obligation was genuinely contested.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not yield a usable entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus; the text reproduced under the TROOPS headword addresses new trial standards in equity, indicating a pagination or indexing error in the source. Researchers should treat the Anderson's entry as unavailable for this term.

Neither dictionary addresses the constitutional dimension of the term (as it might appear in Third Amendment or war powers analysis), nor do they engage with 20th-century developments in military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or international humanitarian law distinctions between combatants and non-combatants. For those contexts, modern federal statutory definitions and service-specific regulations are the appropriate sources.

Jurisdictional Note

Federal military law governs the primary legal definition of troops in the United States context. State militia statutes may use the term with varying scope, and international law (particularly the law of armed conflict) employs related but distinct terminology. Researchers working across jurisdictions or time periods should verify which regulatory regime controls.

TROOPSmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

E J the losing party, who was duly diligent in preparing for trial, has discovered new evidence which will tend to prove a material fact not directly in issue before, or not then investigated, which will probably produce a different result, and which is not merely cumulative.1 In an issue out of chancery, a motion for a new trial is to be made to that court - the verdict being only advisory.2 In criminal cases, a new trial will be granted, in most jurisdictions, on the application of the accused, for cause shown. Public trial. Not necessarily a trial to which the public generally or a large concourse is admitted. The requirement of a public trial is for the benefit of the accused: that the public may see that he is fairly dealt with and not unjustly condemned, and that the presence of interested spectators may keep his triers keenly alive to a sense of their responsibility and to the importance of their functions; and the requirement is fairly observed, if, without partiality or favoritism, a reasonable proportion of the public is suffered to attend. Separate trial. A single or different trial of each of two or more persons accused of participation in the same offense. Error cannot be assigned for refusal to grant such a trial; the granting being discretionary with the court. Speedy trial. The constitutions of the States provide that persons held on a criminal charge have the right to a "speedy trial," a right which was guaranteed by Magna Charta. The meaning is that the trial shall take place as soon as possible after an indictment is found, without depriving the prosecution of a reasonable time for preparation.6 A trial at such a time after the finding of the indictment, regard being had to the terms of court, as will afford the prosecution a reasonable opportunity, by the fair and honest exercise of reasonable diligence, to prepare for a trial. State trial. In England, a prosecution conducted by the government; in particular, a public prosecution of more than ordinary importance. See CALENDAR, 2; DEPOSITION; EVIDENCE; JURY; LIST; PEER; PUNISHED, Twice; RECORD, 2; SLANDER, 1; Conveys the idea of an armed body of soldiers whose sole occupation is war or service, answering to the regular army.7 The organization of the active militia of a State A trial for an offense under a city ordinance may bears no likeness to such a body. It is simply a donot be such a public trial as is intended. 1 United States v. Holliday, 3 Wall. 419 (1865). 2 L. tribunal, platform for a magistrate, judgment1 Chandler v. Thompson, 30 F. R. 44 (1886), Dick, J.; seat: tribunus, chief of a tribe: tribus, one of the Steph. Pl. 93. Watt v. Starke, 101 U. S. 250-56 (1879), cases. • United States v. Williams, 1 Cliff. 17 (1858), cases. Cooley, Const. Lim. *383; 1 Bishop, Cr. Proc. § 959; Grimmett v. State, 22 Tex. Ар. 41 (1886). • Spies et al. v. People, 122 111. 265 (1887). [Exp. Stanley, 4 Nev. 116 (1868), Lewis, J. United States v. Fox, 3 Monta. 517 (1880), Wade, C. J. See also Exp. Jefferson, 62 Miss. 227 (1884). • State v. Topeka, 36 Kan. 87-88 (1886), cases. three original families: tri-, three. Smith v. City of Waterbury, 54 Conn. 178 (1886). United States v. Leng, 18 F. R. 20 (1883), cases, Brown, J.; United States v. Arredondo, 6 Pet. *729 (1832); Belcher v. Linn, 24 How. 522 (1860); 132 Mass. 43. [4 Bl. Com. 363. • See Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 157 (1878); 5 Cal. 347; 23 Ga. 57; 43 Me. 11; 14 N. J. L. 195; 15 S. & R. 156. Dunne v. State, 94 III. 126 (1879), Scott, J.

TROOPSmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

Soldiers collectively; a body of soldiers. The term does not embrace any of the following classes of persons, when traveling separately and not as part of a moving body or detachment of soldiers, viz: Discharged soldiers, discharged military prisoners, and rejected applicants for enlist- ment; applicants for enlistment, provision- ally accepted, but subject to final examina- tion and not sworn in; retired enlisted men; and furloughed soldiers en route back to their stations. 249 U. S. 354. Land-Grant Acts. The military force of the United States is, and always has been a unit, although divided for purposes of admin- istration into several branches; and there is nothing in the land-grant acts to indicate an intention on the part of Congress to differ- entiate between the several branches in respect to transportation charges. It was held that the term "troops" is not confined to land forces, and that it includes men and officers in every branch. Since those in the Navy and Marine Corps are to be deemed troops within the meaning of those acts, members of the Coast Guard should also be deemed such when serving as part of the Navy. But at other times members of the Coast Guard are not troops; for then it operates under, and at the expense of, the Treasury Department. 258 U. S. 376. See FOREIGN TROOPS.

troopsnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

plural of troop

troopsnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Military personnel in uniform.

troopsverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

third-person singular simple present indicative of troop

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