Sponsions

Agreements or engagements made by certain public officers, as generals or admirals, in time of war, either without authority, or by exceeding the limits of authority under which they purport to be made.

Before these conventions can have any binding authority on the state, they must be confirmed by express or tacit ratification. The former is given in positive terms and in the usual forms; the latter is justly implied from the fact of acting under the agreement as if bound by it and from any other circumstance from which an assent may be fairly presumed.
   

This entry contains material from Bouvier's Legal Dictionary, a work published in the 1850's.