Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "year and day." In legal usage, an et jour denotes the period of one year and one day, which historically served as a qualifying threshold in a range of procedural and substantive rules across common law and feudal contexts.
The phrase appears most frequently as a unit of time: the period a claimant, plaintiff, or right must remain continuous, uncontested, or operative before legal consequences attach. It is the temporal core of numerous doctrines rather than a doctrine in itself.
Common Confusion
AN ET JOUR is often encountered as a component of the compound phrase AN, JOUR, ET WASTE (also rendered AN, JOUR ET WAST), which is a distinct feudal doctrine. The standalone phrase denotes only the time period. The compound phrase denotes a specific feudal forfeiture rule: when a tenant committed a felony, the crown was entitled to hold the tenant's lands for a year and a day, during which it could commit waste (strip timber, demolish structures, exploit the land), after which the land escheated to the lord. These are not interchangeable. Researchers encountering either phrase in a feudal or criminal law context should confirm which concept the source is referencing before applying it.
Why It Matters in Research
The year-and-a-day rule that an et jour underlies appears in multiple doctrines that operated under different names and in different procedural contexts. A researcher who encounters an et jour in one context — say, a feudal land treatise — should not assume the same rule is operating when the phrase appears in a criminal law or admiralty context. The phrase is a unit of measure deployed across unrelated bodies of law.
In criminal law, the year-and-a-day rule long governed homicide: a death occurring more than a year and a day after the wrongful act could not be attributed to that act as a matter of law. This rule has been abolished in most common law jurisdictions by statute, but historical sources will apply it without flagging that it has lapsed. Researchers reading 18th- or 19th-century treatises on homicide will encounter an et jour in this context and must recognize that it may not reflect current law anywhere in their research jurisdiction.
In admiralty, Burrill's cross-reference to the Ordonnance de la Marine (Ord. Mar.) signals that an et jour also appeared in French maritime law contexts. Researchers working in admiralty history or comparative maritime law may encounter the phrase in French-language primary sources with jurisdictional scope distinct from English common law.
The feudal variant — AN, JOUR, ET WASTE — is a research dead-end for modern doctrine but remains relevant for historians working with feudal tenure, attainder, and the criminal forfeiture traditions that influenced later American and English confiscation law.
Because an et jour appears in old law French, researchers using pre-20th-century treatises or Year Books should be alert to variant spellings: le an et le jour, un an et un jour, l'an et jour, and similar forms all denote the same concept. Burrill catalogs several of these variants with citations to Britton and the Ordonnance de la Marine, which is useful for primary source tracing.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three dictionary sources — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill — agree on the core translation: year and day. The entries are brief and consistent, reflecting that an et jour is a phrase-unit rather than a self-contained doctrine requiring extended treatment.
Burrill provides the most useful historical sourcing, citing Britton (c. 5) and the Ordonnance de la Marine with specific book, title, and article references. These citations give researchers a path to primary sources in both English and French legal traditions. Black's both editions rely on Termes de la Ley for the AN, JOUR, ET WASTE entry, which is the appropriate citation for that feudal forfeiture rule.
Neither Black's edition elaborates on the criminal law application of the year-and-a-day rule under this heading, treating an et jour as primarily a translation entry and cross-referencing rather than a substantive exposition. Researchers seeking the criminal law doctrine will need to consult entries under YEAR AND DAY in historical dictionaries, where that rule is treated at greater length.
Jurisdictional Note
The criminal law year-and-a-day rule derived from an et jour has been abrogated by statute in most U.S. states and in England. Researchers should verify current status in any given jurisdiction before assuming the rule applies to any post-1990 question. The feudal forfeiture doctrine (an, jour, et waste) has no modern operative counterpart in common law jurisdictions.