Definition
A Latin term from old English and civil law meaning "to approve," "to test," or "to prove good." In legal usage, approbare carried the specific sense of formally sanctioning, ratifying, or affirming the validity of an act, instrument, or claim — not merely expressing assent, but actively vouching for something as proven or acceptable. The term is most often encountered in maxim form and in the procedural vocabulary of medieval and early common law pleading.
The root concept is closely tied to the maxim Qui approbat, non reprobat — "he who approves cannot reject." This principle holds that a party who has formally affirmed or accepted a legal instrument, act, or transaction cannot subsequently challenge or repudiate it. The logic is one of estoppel by election: having taken the benefit or registered approval, a party is foreclosed from later denying the validity of what they approved.
Common Confusion
Approbare is sometimes loosely equated with simple consent or agreement, but the legal term carries a stronger, more formal implication: it means to certify as proven or good, not merely to agree. The distinction matters in historical pleading contexts where approbare indicated a positive evidentiary or juridical act rather than passive acquiescence. Researchers should also take care not to conflate the verb approbare with the noun approbatio (formal approval or ratification), which appears separately in civil law and canon law texts, or with the English procedural term "approve" as used in the law of commons and waste.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering approbare in historical sources will almost always find it in one of two contexts: Latin maxims embedded in treatise arguments, or Latin-language pleading fragments in medieval records. In either case, the term is a flag pointing toward a broader estoppel or election doctrine argument. Tracing its use requires moving laterally from the term itself to the maxim Qui approbat, non reprobat and then into the approbation/reprobation doctrine that developed most fully in equity and Scots law.
The Anderson entry contains a notable structural anomaly: it appears to conflate material from an apportionment entry with the approbare definition, likely a typographical artifact of the original publication. Researchers relying on Anderson should not treat the apportionment and Regina v. Weil reference as directly connected to approbare — that reference belongs to an adjacent entry on apportionment. This is a known hazard in older multi-column dictionary formats where entries bleed across columns.
The term appears with some frequency in civil law-influenced American jurisdictions in the nineteenth century, particularly in Louisiana and in federal equity practice, where the Latin vocabulary of Roman and canon law remained in active use longer than in common law states. In purely common law jurisdictions, approbare had largely been displaced by English equivalents by the eighteenth century, so its presence in a source is itself a jurisdictional and temporal signal.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is terse: "to approve," with a citation to Townshend's Pleadings and a cross-reference to the English entry "Approve." This reflects the standard approach of common law dictionaries to Latin terms — minimal treatment, functional translation, pointer to the English cognate. Burrill does not engage with the maxim or the estoppel dimension.
Anderson is more ambitious but editorially confused in this entry. The substantive contribution is the gloss "literally, to test, try, prove good," which captures the Roman-law depth of the term more accurately than a simple translation as "approve." Anderson's explicit statement of the maxim Qui approbat, non reprobat is the most useful analytical content in either source — it connects the Latin verb to an operative legal principle rather than leaving it as dead vocabulary. The appended case citation (Regina v. Weil) belongs, as noted, to an adjacent entry and should not be read as authority for the maxim itself.
Neither source addresses the civil law or Scots law dimension of approbare, where the approbation/reprobation doctrine received its most developed treatment. Historical researchers needing depth beyond these dictionary entries should consult Bell's Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland and the civilian commentators, where the principle appears in substantially more elaborated form.
Jurisdictional Note
The term and its associated maxim had their greatest doctrinal vitality in civil law systems and in Scots law. In English and American common law, the underlying principle survived but was typically expressed in the language of election, ratification, or estoppel rather than in the Latin form. Louisiana sources may use approbare and the associated maxim directly in a civilian analytical frame.