Definition
In law, "weights" carries distinct meanings depending on context:
1. Physical standards of measurement. Weights are the legally defined standards used to measure mass or heaviness in commercial transactions, trade regulation, and criminal law. The term encompasses both the physical instruments used to measure (as in a set of weights on a scale) and the system of units (such as avoirdupois or troy weight) recognized by law for particular purposes.
2. Evidentiary weight (plural use). In evidence law, "weights" is occasionally used in the plural to refer to the relative probative force assigned to different pieces of evidence — how much credence or persuasive value a factfinder accords to each. This usage, though grammatically irregular, appears in older judicial opinions discussing the comparative strength of competing proofs.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Third-person singular simple present indicative of the verb "to weight" (e.g., "she weights the sample to account for bias").
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Weights" as the plural of "weight" — units or instruments of heaviness; also the general system of measurement by mass.
The legal gap is twofold. First, when lawyers and statutes speak of "weights," they typically invoke a regulatory framework — constitutional and statutory authority to define and enforce uniform standards — not merely physical objects. Second, in evidence discourse, "weights" carries a technical meaning (comparative probative force) that has no counterpart in ordinary speech.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Avoirdupois weight: The system used for ordinary commerce in the United States and historically in England; measures goods by the pound of 16 ounces.
Troy weight: Used historically and still used in precious metals transactions; the troy pound contains 12 ounces.
Apothecaries' weight: A historical pharmaceutical system, largely superseded, based on the troy pound with different subdivisions.
Legal standard weights: Certified physical standards maintained by governmental authority (historically the Exchequer standards in England; the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States) against which commercial weights are tested.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "weights" in historical legal sources almost always appears alongside "measures" — the two are treated as a unified regulatory category rooted in constitutional grants of power. In American law, the power to fix standards of weights and measures is an enumerated congressional power (Article I, Section 8), and researchers tracing regulatory disputes need to follow that thread into both federal and state sources, since states retained concurrent authority.
In English sources, "weights and measures" legislation runs from medieval statutes through the elaborate Victorian consolidation acts, and the terminology shifts considerably across that span. What a seventeenth-century English source calls a "weight" in the sense of a standard may differ from what a nineteenth-century American source means by the same word in a commercial fraud prosecution.
Researchers examining evidence doctrine should be careful to distinguish "weight of evidence" (singular, a doctrine) from "weights of evidence" (plural, sometimes used loosely in older opinions to mean the relative measures of proof on each side). The plural form in evidentiary discussions is a stylistic artifact more than a term of art and does not carry independent doctrinal meaning.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry retrieved under this search heading is misfiled — it concerns ways, passages, and easements, not weights. Researchers using that dictionary should note the alphabetical proximity sometimes produces retrieval artifacts of this kind. No substantive entry for "weights" as a standalone term appears in the recovered Rapalje & Lawrence text.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence does not provide a substantive entry for "weights" as an independent term. The retrieved text addresses easements and ways — an adjacency artifact, not a relevant definition. This absence is itself instructive: mid-to-late nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries often folded "weights" entirely into the composite entry "weights and measures," treating the standalone term as too obvious to require independent definition. Researchers consulting historical dictionaries for this term should search the compound form.
Older English dictionaries such as Tomlin's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary (American editions) address weights primarily through the lens of statutory standards and the offenses of using false weights — a criminal and regulatory framing. The common law treated the use of false weights as a misdemeanor at least from the Tudor period, and dictionary definitions of the era reflect that enforcement orientation.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, both federal and state law address weights and measures, with federal standards setting the baseline and states enforcing them at the commercial level. In England, the historical Exchequer standards and the weights and measures magistracy created a distinct enforcement apparatus that has no direct American analog.