Definition
A Latin term from Roman civil law meaning to add, to join, or to annex one thing to another. Used in classical legal texts to describe the act of attaching or appending something — whether a clause, condition, obligation, or physical thing — to an existing legal instrument, obligation, or property arrangement.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Latin-text sources and in treatises engaging directly with Roman or civil law. Researchers encountering adjicere in historical documents should treat it as a signal that the surrounding text is drawing on civilian (Roman law) tradition rather than common law. It often appears in discussions of stipulations, contracts, or property transfers where something is being added to an existing legal arrangement — a condition to a sale, a clause to a bond, or a party to an obligation.
Because the term has no direct common law English equivalent that absorbed its usage, it tends not to migrate into English-language legal texts except as untranslated Latin in scholarly or civilian commentary. Researchers working with early American or colonial legal sources that reference civil law principles may encounter it in treatises rather than in court records or statutes.
The key navigational point: adjicere describes the act of addition or annexation itself, not the thing being added. When parsing a Latin passage, look for the object of adjicere to identify what is being annexed — a condition (condicionem adjicere), a penalty, a party, or a clause.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry in its most minimal form: "To add; to join to," with attribution to Brissonius — a reference to Barnabé Brisson (Brissonius), the sixteenth-century French jurist whose De Verbis Juris was a standard reference for Latin legal terminology. This attribution is characteristic of Burrill's method of tracing civilian terms to their authoritative glossary sources rather than to case law.
The entry's brevity reflects the term's function: adjicere is a building-block verb in Roman legal Latin, not a technical term of art carrying its own body of doctrine. Its significance lies in context — what is being added, to what, and under what legal framework — rather than in any intrinsic legal meaning of the word itself. Historical dictionaries beyond Burrill offer little additional elaboration because the term was not contested or interpreted in ways that generated commentary.