Definition
A Latin law term meaning to file, or to place upon the record. In historical legal practice, affilare denoted the formal act of depositing a document with a court or official record-keeper so that it became part of the official record. The related form affiletur functions as a directive — "let it be filed" — appearing in court orders and judicial endorsements instructing that a document be made part of the record. The participial form affilatum appears in the phrase de recordo affilatum, meaning "affiled of record" or formally entered into the court's record.
Common Confusion
Affilare is sometimes loosely associated with the English word "affiliate" due to surface similarity, but the two are unrelated in legal meaning. Affiliate carries connotations of association, connection, or organizational relationship. Affilare concerns only the physical and procedural act of placing a document into an official file or record. A researcher encountering affilare in a historical legal text should read it exclusively in the filing sense and resist any inference of associational or corporate meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
Affilare and its variants appear almost exclusively in early English common law materials, Year Books, and legal Latin treatises from the medieval and early modern periods. Researchers working in Law Mind's historical corpus should note:
The term belongs to the body of Law Latin that persisted in English court practice well past the Norman period and into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It surfaces most often in procedural records, court orders, and endorsements rather than in substantive legal arguments.
The directive form affiletur will appear as a marginal notation or brief endorsement on writs and pleadings, signaling a court's instruction to the clerk. Researchers unfamiliar with Law Latin procedural terms may overlook or misread these notations when working through manuscript records or early printed reports.
The phrase de recordo affilatum signals that a matter has been formally entered on the court's record — a distinction that carried procedural weight in historical practice, as the record of a court of record was treated as conclusive evidence of what had occurred. Encountering this phrase in a historical source indicates that the document or proceeding in question had achieved the status of an official enrolled record, with the evidentiary and preclusive consequences that entailed.
Modern filing terminology has entirely displaced affilare in contemporary practice. The term has no live usage in current legal documents, statutes, or rules. Its research value is purely historical and interpretive.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement. Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill all define affilare as "to file or affile" and cite the same authorities — 8 Coke and 2 Lord Raymond 1476 — for the directive form affiletur and the phrase de recordo affilatum. Bouvier's is slightly broader in phrasing, defining the term as "to put on record; to file," and cites 8 Coke 319 and 2 M. & S. 202. The inclusion of "to put on record" in Bouvier's formulation is marginally more informative, capturing the substantive legal effect (enrollment on the record) rather than only the procedural act (filing). No dictionary diverges on the core meaning.
One minor textual variation worth noting: Black's 2nd edition renders the phrase as de recordo afflatum rather than affilatum as found in Black's 1st ed. and Burrill. This appears to be a typographical error in the 2nd edition rather than a meaningful variant. Researchers transcribing from the 2nd edition should be aware of this discrepancy.
None of the source dictionaries elaborate on the procedural consequences of affilare beyond its bare definition, nor do they situate the term within the broader system of record-keeping in common law courts. Researchers needing that context should consult historical treatments of English court procedure and the law of records.
Jurisdictional Note
Affilare is a term of English common law procedure and appears primarily in English and early American legal sources. It has no continuing doctrinal significance in any modern jurisdiction. American courts adopted the general concept of filing through domestic procedural rules and statutes, without retaining the Latin terminology.