Definition
A Latin term from old English practice meaning "to allow." Used in medieval and early common law procedure to describe the act of a court or justice formally allowing a pleading, exception, or claim raised by a party. When a party petitioned that justices *allocare* a particular exception — that is, formally recognize and give effect to it — the court's decision whether to allow or refuse that exception determined whether the party's defense or objection could proceed.
The term is closely related to the broader allocatur doctrine, under which courts certified or confirmed the allowance of writs, costs, and other procedural items.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Care given to an infant by an animal that is not the infant's parent (alloparental care in biology).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed; the term does not appear to have carried a recognized common English meaning in the nineteenth century.
The gap here is total rather than partial. The biological meaning now attached to a similar-sounding word in modern usage has no relationship whatsoever to the legal term. Researchers encountering *allocare* in legal sources should not import any meaning from the biological or common vocabulary.
Common Confusion
Allocare is frequently conflated with *allocatur*, the related Latin term meaning "it is allowed" — the third-person singular passive form used when a court certified that a writ of error, costs, or other matter had been formally allowed. The distinction matters in research: *allocare* is the infinitive denoting the act or power of allowing, appearing in statutory and procedural texts describing what justices may or may not do; *allocatur* is the judicial certificate or notation confirming that allowance has occurred. Both terms descend from the same root and appear in overlapping contexts, but they are not interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
Allocare appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with medieval English practice and early common law procedure. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should expect to encounter it primarily in statutory material (particularly the Statutes of Westminster), early Year Books, and treatises on pleading and exceptions. It is a term of art tied to a specific procedural moment — the judicial recognition of a party's exception — and will not appear in modern American or English practice.
The principal research trap is treating the term as archaic filler. When allocare appears in a historical text, it signals a procedurally significant moment: the court is either granting or withholding formal recognition of a party's legal position. Understanding the stakes of that allowance — and the consequences when justices refused to allocare an exception, which could give rise to further review — is essential to correctly interpreting the passages in which the term appears.
Researchers should also note that the term appears in its Latin form in sources that otherwise mix Latin and Law French. The context of Statute of Westminster II, chapter 31 (13 Edw. I, 1285) is specifically the procedures by which exceptions to writs and pleadings were handled, and allocare there carries full procedural weight.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary treatment in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill correctly identifies allocare as a term of old Latin practice, quotes the relevant statutory passage from Westminster II, and explains the procedural context without embellishment. The entry is accurate as far as it goes, though it is brief and does not trace the relationship between allocare and the broader allocatur doctrine or the downstream consequences of a justice's refusal to allow an exception.
No significant divergence exists among historical sources on this term, largely because its use was narrow, its period of active legal deployment was medieval, and later lexicographers had little occasion to develop the entry beyond what Burrill supplies. The gap in the historical record is not disagreement but silence: post-Blackstone English legal dictionaries largely subsumed the term's function under allocatur and related entries, and American sources rarely address it at all.
Jurisdictional Note
Allocare as an operative procedural term belongs to English practice under the medieval common law and has no distinct American counterpart. Researchers working in English historical materials will encounter it; those working in American sources will not, except in treatises that trace the English roots of American procedural law.