Definition
A reference term used in legal documents, briefs, treatises, and other written instruments to direct the reader back to a citation, quotation, or passage that appeared earlier in the same document. "Above cited" and "above mentioned" are used interchangeably to indicate that the source or matter referred to has already been introduced at a prior point in the text. The term functions as an internal cross-reference, equivalent in purpose to modern usage of "supra" or "as cited above."
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Above" in ordinary English means physically higher, or earlier in a written text. "Cited" means referenced or quoted. The compound phrase carries no specialized meaning in everyday speech.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Above" was used in written contexts to mean "previously in this document," consistent with its spatial metaphor applied to text. "Cited" meant called upon or referenced as authority.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but worth noting. In ordinary writing, "above" is simply a directional marker. In legal drafting, "above cited" is a term of art with a specific documentary function — it signals a formal prior reference that the reader is expected to locate and treat as already established authority within the instrument. Legal readers understand it as a structural signal, not merely a spatial one.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical legal texts, particularly pre-twentieth century case reporters, treatises, and pleading documents, will encounter "above cited" and "above mentioned" regularly. The terms are predecessors to the now-standard Latin "supra," which displaced them in formal legal writing over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A researcher who encounters "above cited" in a historical document should treat it exactly as they would "supra" — as a pointer to a prior reference within the same document, not to an external source.
The practical trap: in transcribed or digitized historical documents, "above cited" may appear without the corresponding prior citation being immediately findable, particularly if the document has been excerpted, paginated differently, or partially reproduced. Always check that the full document is in hand before concluding that the referenced citation is missing or erroneous.
The phrase also appears in historical legislation and official records where "supra" was considered too formal or insufficiently plain. Statutory drafters in certain periods preferred vernacular English reference terms, so "above cited" in a statute or ordinance carries the same weight as a formal supra reference.
No jurisdictional variation is significant for this term. Its meaning is consistent across common law jurisdictions wherever it appears.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) explains the term as figurative in origin, derived from the ancient practice of writing on scrolls, where earlier content was physically above later content on the same roll. Whatever was cited or mentioned earlier in the document was therefore literally above the current passage. Black's cites the Encyclopedia Londinensis as its authority for this explanation, grounding the phrase in manuscript culture rather than Roman or canonical legal tradition.
This origin distinguishes "above cited" from "supra," which derives directly from Latin legal and scholarly practice. The two terms converged in function while diverging in pedigree — one rooted in English vernacular document culture, the other in Continental and ecclesiastical legal writing. Historical dictionaries do not flag any meaningful divergence in meaning between the two, treating them as functional equivalents.
What historical sources largely miss is the transitional period when both "above cited" and "supra" appeared in the same document types, sometimes used by the same author interchangeably. Researchers should not read any distinction of formality or authority into the choice of one over the other in historical texts.
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