XXVIII - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

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The Law Mind • 601 words

Definition

XXVIII is the Roman numeral designation for the number twenty-eight. In legal and legislative contexts, it functions as an ordinal identifier — most commonly used to designate the Twenty-Eighth Congress of the United States, which convened from December 4, 1843 to March 3, 1845.

As a legislative reference marker, XXVIII appears in the organizational structure of compiled statutes, treaty collections, and session law indexes where Roman numerals were the standard convention for numbering congressional sessions, statutory volumes, treaty series, and regnal or parliamentary enumerations.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering XXVIII in historical legal sources are almost always dealing with a citation or cross-reference problem, not a substantive legal term. The Roman numeral convention for numbering Congresses was standard practice in nineteenth-century legal publishing and persists in the organizational spine of compilations such as the Statutes at Large. A researcher who cannot fluently convert between Roman and Arabic numerals will misread volume references, session identifiers, and treaty series numbers in primary sources from this era.

In the Law Mind corpus, XXVIII appears as an index and organizational marker within the structure of the Statutes at Large and associated compilations. The Anderson's Dictionary entry from which this term surfaces is itself a bibliographic description of that compilation's volume organization — Congresses XXVIII through XXXV are accounted for across volumes 6 through 11. Researchers using these volumes should note that the organizational logic separates public laws, private laws, Indian treaties, and European treaties into distinct volumes, meaning that a single Congress may be distributed across multiple volumes depending on the character of the legislation or instrument sought.

The Twenty-Eighth Congress (1843–1845) is historically significant for researchers focused on westward expansion, the annexation of Texas, and the legislative groundwork for what became the Mexican-American War era. Statutes and resolutions from this Congress will be found in the Statutes at Large volume corresponding to the XXVIII designation in the Anderson compilation structure.

A common navigational trap: Roman numeral volume designations in nineteenth-century legal series do not always map one-to-one onto congressional sessions. Private laws, Indian treaties, and European treaties were compiled in separate volumes (as the Anderson structure makes explicit), so a researcher looking for a treaty concluded during the period of the Twenty-Eighth Congress must look beyond the public laws volume bearing that numeral.

Historical Dictionary Support

Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not define XXVIII as a substantive legal term. The entry from which this term is drawn is a bibliographic index description of the Statutes at Large compilation, organized by congressional session using Roman numerals. Anderson uses XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, and successive numerals purely as organizational markers — the "definition" is the compilation structure itself.

This is consistent with the broader practice of nineteenth-century legal reference works, which treated Roman numeral designations as self-evident to a legally educated readership trained in classical literacy. Historical legal dictionaries of the period (Bouvier, Black's early editions, Burrill) do not carry entries for individual Roman numerals; the assumption was that any practitioner or scholar working with legal materials possessed sufficient classical education to read them fluently. That assumption cannot be carried forward uncritically into modern research practice.

Jurisdictional Note

Roman numeral congressional designations are a feature of federal legislative organization. State legislative sessions and compilations used varying conventions; researchers working in state session laws from the same era should not assume parallel Roman numeral organization.

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Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

Dec. 7, 1835 to March 4, 1845. Vol. 6. Private laws. March 4, 1789 to March 1845. Vol. 7. Indian treaties. Sept. 17, 1778 to Oct. 11, 1842. Vol. 8. European treaties. Feb. 6, 1778 to Nov. 10, 1845. Vol. 9. Congresses: XXIX, XXX, XXXI. Dec. 1, 1845 to March 4, 1851. Vol. 10. Congresses: XXXII, XXXIII. Dec. 1, 1851 to March 4, 1855. Vol. 11. Congresses: XXXIV, XXXV. Dec. 3, 1855 to March 4, 1859. Vol. 12. Congresses: XXXVI, XXVII. Dec. 5, 1859 to March 4, 1863. Vol. 13. Congress: XXXVIII. Dec. 7, 1863 to March 4, 1865. Vol. 14. Congress: XXXIX. Dec. 4, 1865 to March 4, 1867. Vol. 15. Congress: XL.¹ March 4, 1867 to March 4, 1869. Vol. 16. Congress: XLI.1 March 4, 1869 to March 4, 1871. Vol. 17. Congress: XLII.1 March 4, 1871 to March Statute of Wills. See WILL, 2. Statutes at large. Statutes in full or at length as originally enacted, in distinction from abridgments, compilations, and revisions. In particular, the title of the publica4, 1873. tion containing, chiefly, the acts of Conthe United States Statutes at Large. gress Acts of the State legislatures, as a rule, go by other names, as, "session laws," in Pennsylvania "pamphlet laws." 3 The United States Statutes at Large exhibit the legislation of the several Congresses from March 4, 1789, the day of the organization of the government and of the first meeting of the First Congress. Each volume after the eighth contains all matters in the nature of legislation ordained or enacted by the Congress or Congresses in session, or by the Administration in power, during the periods covered by the volumes respectively - general or public statutes, private acts, treaties with the Indian tribes and with foreign nations, postal, consular and other conventions, public proclamations by the President and by the heads of departments, Executive orders, resolutions by the Senate and House, etc. The different volumes and legislative periods are subjoined. Compare REVISED STATUTES, Of the United States; SESSION, 2. Vol. 1. Congresses: I, II, III, IV, V. March 4, 1789 to March 4, 1799. United States, 113 id. 571 (1885), cases; Barbour v. Louisville, 83 Ky. 102 (1885). 1 Pennock v. Dialogue, 2 Pet. *18 (1829); McDonald v. Hovey, 110 U. S. 628 (1884). 2 Cathcart v. Robinson, 5 Pet. *280-82 (1831). 3 See Dwarris, Statutes, 626. Held an extra session. Vol. 18. Congress: XLIII. Dec. 1, 1873 to March 4, 1875. Vol. 19. Congress: XLIV. Dec. 6, 1875 to March 4, 1877. Vol. 20. Congress: XLV.1 Oct. 15, 1877 to March 4, 1879. Vol. 21. Congress: XLVI. March 18, 1879 to March 4, 1881. Vol. 22. Congress: XLVII. Dec. 5, 1881 to March 4, 1883. Vol. 23. Congress: XLVIII. Dec. 3, 1883 to March 4, 1885. Vol. 24. Congress: XLIX. Dec. 7, 1885 to March 4, 1887. Vol. 25. Congress: L. Dec. 5, 1887 to March 4, 1889. STATUTE-MERCHANT, STATUTE-