The commencement or inauguration of anything. The first establishment of a law, rule, rite, etc. Any custom, system, organization , etc., firmly established. An elementary rule or principle. In practice . The commencement of an action or prosecution ; us, A. B. lias instituted a suit against C. D. to recover damages for trespass. In political law. A law, rite, or ceremony enjoined by authority as a permanent rule of conduct or of government Webster. A system or body of usages, laws, or regulations, of extensive and recurring operation, containing within itself an organism by which it effects its own independent action, continuance , and generally its own further development . Its object is to generate, effect, regulate, or sanction a succession of acts, transactions, or productions of a peculiar kind or class. We are likewise in the habit of calling single laws or usages “institutions,” if their operation is of vital importance and vast scope, and if their continuance is in a high degree independent of any interfering power. Lieb. Civil Lib. 300. In corporation law . An organization or foundation, for the exercise of some public purpose or function; as an asylum or a university. By the term ” institution ” in this sense is to be understood an establishment or organization which is permanent in its nature, as distinguished from an enterprise or undertaking which is transient and temporary. Humphries v. Little Sisters of the l’oor, 20 Ohio St. 200; Indianapolis v. Sturdevant 24 Ind. 391. In ecclesiastical law . A kind of investiture of the spiritual part of the benefice, as induction is of the temporal; for by institution the care of the souls of the parish Is committed to the charge of the clerk. Brown. In the civil law . The designation by a testator of a person to be his heir. In jurisprudence . The plural form of this word (“institutions”) is sometimes used as the equivalent of ” institutes ,” to denote an elementary text-book of the law.
Black’s Law Online Dictionary
