Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "from the making" or "from the time of making." Used in legal instruments and judicial reasoning to mark the point from which a period of time is measured — specifically, from the moment a document was executed or a legal act was completed. The phrase operates as a temporal reference, fixing the start of a limitations period, a condition, or an obligation to the instant of the instrument's creation.
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Common Language
There is no meaningful common-language counterpart. A confectione is pure legal Latin with no ordinary English usage. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted accordingly.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter a confectione most often in older English case law and conveyancing materials where time is measured from a deed's execution rather than its delivery, recording, or some other triggering event. The distinction matters: early common law sources sometimes used a confectione interchangeably with phrases tied to delivery (a traditione) or sealing, but these are not the same moment, and conflating them in a historical research context can misplace a limitations period or condition by days, weeks, or longer.
The phrase appears in Year Book–era and early modern English decisions where courts were working out when exactly a deed "spoke" — a question that had real consequences for calculating notice, priority, and the running of time. Burrill's citation to 5 Co. 1 (Coke's Reports) and 1 Ld. Raym. 480 (Lord Raymond's Reports) places the phrase squarely in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century common law tradition. Researchers working in that period should treat a confectione as a technical marker of execution-time, not a loose synonym for any other temporal trigger.
In American legal materials, the phrase virtually disappears after the early nineteenth century as courts shifted to plain-English drafting and statutory time computation. If you encounter it in a pre-1800 American instrument or opinion — particularly in jurisdictions with strong English common law inheritance — the interpretive framework of the English cases Burrill cites will typically govern.
One navigational trap: because confectio (the root noun) can refer broadly to the "making" or "preparation" of any legal act, context is essential. In a deed, a confectione almost certainly means from execution. In a plea or other procedural instrument, it may mean from the filing or engrossment. Do not assume the referent without checking the surrounding instrument.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary historical dictionary source for this entry, and his treatment is spare: a Latin gloss ("from the making"), two case citations, and a cross-reference to the headword Confectio. This terseness is itself informative — Burrill treats the phrase as sufficiently settled that it requires no extended explanation, suggesting it was a standard term of art in the English and early American materials he was synthesizing.
No other shelf sources in the Law Mind corpus provide a dedicated entry. The phrase does not appear in Black's early editions as a standalone headword, though the concept it expresses is discussed in entries on deed execution and limitations. Tomlin's Law Dictionary (1835) similarly folds the concept under Confectio rather than treating the ablative phrase separately.
The two citations Burrill provides are real anchors. Coke's Reports (5 Co. 1) and Lord Raymond's Reports (1 Ld. Raym. 480) are authoritative English reporters; any researcher needing to trace the precise judicial use of a confectione should begin there.
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is essentially confined to English common law materials and early American cases drawing directly on English authority. Modern American and English courts do not use it in contemporary opinions. Its legal force survives only insofar as historical instruments incorporating it must be interpreted according to the meaning it carried at the time of execution.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Deed Execution
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Time Computation in Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Latin Maxims and Phrases in Common Law
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