Appropriation (law)

In law and government, appropriation (from Latin appropriare, "to make one's own", later "to ") is the act of something for its application to a particular usage, to the exclusion of all other uses.

It typically refers to the legislative designation of money for particular uses, in the context of a budget or spending bill.

in ecclesiastical law, appropriation is the perpetual annexation of an ecclesiastical benefice to the use of some spiritual corporation, either aggregate or sole. In the Middle Ages in England the custom grew up of the monasteries reserving to their own use the greater part of the tithes of their appropriated benefices, leaving only a small portion to their vicars in the parishes. On the dissolution of the monasteries the rights to collect "great tithes" were often sold off, along with former monastic lands, to laymen; whose successors, known as "lay impropriators" or "lay rectors," still hold them, the system being known as impropriation.

In the law of debtor and creditor, appropriation of payments is the application of a particular payment for the purpose of paying a particular debt. When a creditor has two debts due to him from the same debtor on distinct accounts, the general law as to the appropriation of payments made by the debtor is that the debtor is entitled to apply the payments to such account as he thinks fit; solvitur in modum solventis. In default of appropriation by the debtor the creditor is entitled to determine the application of the sums paid, and may appropriate them even to the discharge of debts barred by the Statute of Limitations. In default of appropriation by either debtor or creditor, the law implies an appropriation of the earlier payments to the earlier debts

In constitutional law, appropriation is the assignment of money for a special purpose.

In the United Kingdom an appropriation act appropriating various sums to government departments and quangos, as set out by the government.

In the United States, an appropriations bill is a bill that appropriates (gives to, sets aside for) money to specific federal government departments, agencies, and programs. The money provides funding for operations, personnel, equipment, and activities. Regular appropriations bills are passed annually, with the funding they provide covering one fiscal year. The fiscal year is the accounting period of the American federal government, which runs from October 1 to September 30 of the following year. The United States Constitution (art. I. § 9) says: "No money shall be from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law." This places the responsibility and power of deciding appropriations under the jurisdiction of the United States House Committee on Appropriations and the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations. Both committees have twelve matching subcommittees, each tasked with working on one of the twelve annual regular appropriations bills.

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