ARTICULI SUPER CHARTAS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

ARTICULI SUPER CHARTASAuthored

The Law Mind • 800 words

Definition

Latin: "Articles upon the charters." A statute enacted in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Edward I (1300), formally designated as 28 Edw. I, st. 3. The statute served a threefold purpose: it confirmed the provisions of Magna Carta and the Charta de Foresta, enlarged and clarified certain of their particulars, and established mechanisms for enforcing their observance, including procedures for punishing those who violated them. It is one of the foundational constitutional statutes of medieval English law, functioning as an interpretive and enforcement supplement to the two great charters it supported.

Common Confusion

Articuli Super Chartas is sometimes loosely grouped with Magna Carta itself in rhetorical or popular constitutional writing, creating the impression that the two documents are a single instrument or that Articuli is simply a restatement of Magna Carta. They are distinct statutes. Magna Carta (1215, with authoritative reissues through 1297) establishes substantive liberties; Articuli Super Chartas (1300) addresses enforcement, elaborates specific articles, and extends the charters' reach in particular respects. A researcher treating them as interchangeable will misread the scope and application of both.

Why It Matters in Research

Structural pattern: historical evolution with deep cross-referencing. This term requires careful handling in the Law Mind corpus because the statute occupies a specific but easily overlooked position in the chain of English constitutional instruments.

First, dating and regnal year conventions matter. The statute is consistently cited as 28 Edw. I, st. 3. Researchers working with pre-modern legal materials will encounter variant forms of this citation, including abbreviated Latin references and inconsistent chapter numbering across different printed editions of the statutes of the realm. Confirm you are looking at st. 3 and not another statute of the same regnal year.

Second, Coke's commentary is essential context. Burrill notes that Lord Coke included Articuli Super Chartas among the statutes he considered worthy of extended commentary. Coke's treatment in his Institutes shapes how later English and early American lawyers understood the statute's significance. Any corpus source citing the statute approvingly in the seventeenth century or later is almost certainly filtering it through Coke's constitutional lens, not reading it fresh.

Third, the enforcement dimension is historically significant and often underappreciated. Magna Carta famously lacks a robust enforcement mechanism beyond the security clause of the 1215 original (itself dropped in reissues). Articuli Super Chartas filled part of that gap by specifying procedures and penalties. Researchers tracing the development of constitutional enforcement doctrines — as opposed to constitutional rights — should treat Articuli as a primary source, not a footnote to Magna Carta.

Fourth, the statute's relevance to forest law is distinct from its Magna Carta provisions. The Charta de Foresta (1217) governed royal forest rights and peasant use rights, and Articuli's confirmation and enlargement of that charter sits in a separate analytical tradition from its Magna Carta work. Do not collapse the two strands.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill are in close agreement on the core description: all three identify the statute as 28 Edw. I, st. 3, describe it as confirming and enlarging Magna Carta and the Charta de Foresta, and note its enforcement provisions. Black's and Burrill both cite 2 Reeve, History of English Law, pages 103 and 233 (with Burrill extending the citation to pages 233–241), providing a shared historiographical anchor in John Reeve's eighteenth-century legal history. Rapalje & Lawrence gives a compressed entry, citing a different source (4 Car. & P. 544), though that citation appears to bleed from the adjacent entry for Articulo Mortis rather than applying cleanly to Articuli Super Chartas — researchers should treat the Rapalje citation with caution.

Burrill adds the most substantively useful detail by flagging Coke's commentary, which neither Black's nor Rapalje capture explicitly. This is a meaningful divergence: Burrill points researchers toward the interpretive tradition that actually governed how the statute functioned in common law argument, while the other dictionaries treat it as a bare historical reference. None of the three historical dictionaries adequately addresses the statute's enforcement provisions in any depth; for that analysis, Reeve's History and Coke's Institutes (Second Part) remain the primary secondary sources.

Jurisdictional Note

Articuli Super Chartas is an English statute with no direct American legislative equivalent. It was received into American legal culture primarily through its influence on constitutional rhetoric and through Coke's commentary, not through colonial reception statutes. Its operational relevance in American courts is historical and interpretive rather than positive law.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Magna Carta | Charta de Foresta | Constitutional History of England

ARTICULI SUPER CHARTASmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

ticles upon the charters. The title of a statute passed in the twenty-eighth year of Edward I. st. 3, confirming or enlarging many par- ticulars in Magna Charta, and the Charta de Foresta, and appointing a method for en- C forcing the observance of them, and for the punishment of offenders. 2 Reeve, Hist. Eng. Law, 103, 233.

ARTICULI SUPER CHARTASmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

- The Stat. 28 Edw. I. st. 3, in confirmation and enlargement of Magna Carta and the Charta de Foresta. & P. 544. ARTICULO MORTIS, (in criminal law). 4 Car. ARTIFICIAL.-Created by art, or by law; existing only by force of or in contemplation of law. Thus, artificial person, a corporation or company to which the law has given a distinct individuality, as distinguished from a natural person who is such by nature; artificial presumptions, also called "legal presumptions," those which derive their force and effect from the law, rather than their natural tendency to produce belief. 3 Stark. Ev. 1235. ARTS, (lost, under patent laws). 10 How. (U. 8.) 477. (useful, include processes). 15 How. (U. S.) 252, 268. ARURA.-An old English law term, signifying a day's work in plowing. g; a AS.-(1) A pound; a coin weighing a pound (twelve ounces). (2) The whole of a thing; sum of money, estate or inheritance in its entirety AS A REMEMBRANCE, (in a will). L. R. 13 Eq. Cas. 131. AS ADMINISTRATOR, (in an action). 6 Halst. (N. J.) 163. (A. contracting). 4 Conn. 495; 8 Id. 19, 192; 9 Wend. (N. Y.) 273. (covenant of warranty in a deed). 8 (deed given). 5 Wheel. Am. C. L. Mass. 162; 5 Wheel. Am. C. L. 337. 343; 6 Conn. 258. (in government contracts). 9 Mass. 1 East 135, 579; 1 T. R. 172, 674. (in a promissory note). 1 Cow. (N. 12 Mass. 244; 16 Id. 461. Y.) 513; (in a release). 22 Wend. (N. Y.) 324. AS AMPLE A MANNER AS A., (in a covenant). 9 Johns. (N. Y.) 107. AS AND FOR, (in pleading). 3 Barn. & C. 541. AS APPEARS BY THE ACCOUNT, (in affidavit to hold to bail). 1 Wils. 121. AS APPEARS BY THE BILL, (in affidavit to hold to bail). 1 Wils. 279. AS APPEARS BY THE MASTER'S ALLOCATUR, (in affidavit to hold to bail). 2 T. R. 55. AS BEFORE, (in a will). Coot. Ch. Cas. 243. AS EXECUTOR, (covenant by A.). 1 Gall. (U. S.) 37. AS EXECUTORS ARE BOUND IN LAW TO DO, (in covenant of warranty). 2 Ohio, 345. AS FAST AS THAT, (in a contract to deliver goods). 104 Mass. 350. AS FOLLOWS, (equivalent to "in words and figures following"). 2 W. Bl. 787, 788. L. 233. Leach C. 96, 97. (in written instrument). 1 Chit. Cr. (in an indictment). Doug. 193; 1 C. 77, 145, 192; 2 W. Bl. 787. (in an indictment for libel). 11 Mod. (in a will). 2 Barn. & C. 520. AS FOR, (in a devise). Penn. (N. J.) 601. (in a will). 12 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 54. (introductory, in a will). 2 Nott, & M. (S. C.) 383; 2 Binn. (Pa.) 13, 455; 3 Id. 494; 8 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 288; 14 Id. 90; 2 Yeates (Pa.) 382; 4 Id. 179; 1 Munf. (Va.) 537; 7 Bing. 664; Cro. Jac. 104, 145; 2 P. Wms. 198; 3 Wils. 143.

ARTICULI SUPER CHARTASmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Lat. Articles upon the charters. The title of a statute passed in the twenty-eighth year of Edward I. st. 3, confirming or enlarging many particulars in Magna Charta, and the Charta de Foresta; and appointing a method for enforcing the observance of them, and for the punishment of offenders. 2 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 103, 233-241. Lord Coke has included this statute in the number of those commented on in his Institutes. 2 Inst. 537. And see Barringt. Obs. Stat. 182.

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