Definition
A Law French term meaning "amends" or "fines" — specifically, the monetary penalties or reparations imposed by a court as satisfaction for a wrong or injury. In medieval and early English legal practice, amendes referred to sums assessed against a party as a form of civil or criminal redress. The term appears in early legal texts primarily in compound phrases, notably *dues amendes* (due amends) and *amendes de damages* (amends for damages), reflecting its dual function as both a penal and compensatory instrument.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of *amende* — the French word for a fine or financial penalty.
Historical common usage: The term has no independent entry in Webster's 1913, reflecting its status as a technical borrowing rather than an assimilated English word.
Editorial note: In ordinary French usage, *amende* is a straightforward word for a monetary fine. The legal English term carries a narrower, archaic sense tied specifically to court-imposed reparations in the feudal and early common law tradition, where the distinction between punishment and satisfaction to an injured party was often blurred within the same payment.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *amendes* in historical legal sources should be alert to two things. First, the term is almost exclusively a marker of Law French materials — its presence signals that a source dates to the medieval or early modern period, likely pre-1650, when Law French remained the dominant language of English court records and legal treatises. Second, the compound phrases matter: *dues amendes* signals a procedural or pleading context (due amends as a formal response or tender), while *amendes de damages* points toward the compensatory damages function. Conflating these can distort interpretation of what a court was actually ordering.
Burrill's citation to Britton (c. 27) anchors the term in one of the foundational Law French treatises of the late thirteenth century. Researchers working backward from later common law fine and damages doctrine should treat *amendes* as a precursor concept that was gradually displaced by more differentiated English terminology — "damages," "fine," "penalty," "satisfaction" — as Law French gave way to English in legal proceedings after the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1731.
The term is essentially dormant in modern legal practice and will not appear in contemporary statutes or case law. Its research value is entirely historical and terminological.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is terse but precise, giving the Law French gloss ("Amends"), identifying the compound forms, and anchoring both to Britton. This is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of Law French terms — reliable for identification and source reference, but not analytical. No other major historical English law dictionaries in the standard corpus (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin's New Law Dictionary) give *amendes* a dedicated entry, suggesting it was recognized as an archaic term even by the nineteenth century. Burrill preserves it primarily as a reading aid for those working with medieval sources rather than as a term of living legal significance.
The absence of any elaboration in Burrill beyond the citation to Britton is itself informative: by the time Burrill compiled his dictionary, *amendes* had no independent doctrinal weight and survived only as a textual artifact of the older legal literature.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs to the English common law tradition as inherited from Norman and Angevin legal culture. It has no recognized use in American law and no equivalent currency in civil law jurisdictions, where the cognate French *amende* functions as an ordinary term for fines without the specific historical legal freight carried by the Law French *amendes*.