BARET - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BARETAuthored

The Law Mind • 532 words

Definition

An obsolete Law French term denoting a wrangling or contentious suit — a dispute characterized by quarrelsome, vexatious, or fractious litigation. The term does not refer to a distinct cause of action but rather describes the nature or quality of a legal proceeding: one marked by strife, clamor, or habitual contention rather than legitimate legal grievance.

Common Confusion

BARET should not be confused with BARRATRY (also spelled BARRETRY). Though both terms derive from the same root concept of contentious or stirred-up litigation, barratry developed into a recognized common law offense — the habitual incitement of quarrels or lawsuits — with defined elements and criminal consequences. BARET, by contrast, never crystallized into an offense or cause of action. It remained a descriptive label for the character of a suit. The two terms occupy different registers: barratry is doctrinal; baret is characterizing.

Why It Matters in Research

BARET is a relic term encountered almost exclusively in early English legal sources and their American reprints. Researchers are most likely to meet it when working through Coke's Littleton (Co. Litt. 368b) or Britton (c. 92), both foundational texts in the common law tradition that Law Mind's historical corpus includes. The term carries no independent doctrinal weight in modern law; its significance is purely interpretive — it signals that the source author is characterizing a suit as vexatious or brought in bad faith rather than describing a formal legal category.

The concept BARET gestures toward overlaps with later, better-developed doctrines: barratry (the offense of habitually stirring up suits), champerty, and maintenance. Researchers tracing the genealogy of anti-vexatious litigation rules in early common law should treat BARET as a waypoint, not a terminus. When reading historical pleading manuals or abridgments that use the term, do not mistake it for a procedural designation — it is an editorial or characterizing label applied to litigation conduct.

Corpus trap: Because Law French terms were frequently anglicized, abbreviated, or corrupted in manuscript and early print sources, BARET may appear in variant spellings. Cross-reference with the surrounding context rather than relying on spelling alone.

Historical Dictionary Support

All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st Ed.), Black's (2nd Ed.), and Burrill's — agree precisely on the definition: "a wrangling suit," with identical citations to Britton c. 92 and Co. Litt. 368b. This uniformity reflects the term's narrow, uncontested meaning rather than any independent analysis by the lexicographers; each is transmitting the same received definition from the same two primary sources.

Burrill's entry is marginally more useful for corpus navigation because it places BARET in sequence with related entries (BARGA follows immediately), illustrating the dense clustering of archaic Law French terms in early legal dictionaries. None of the three dictionaries elaborates on the term's practical application, historical usage frequency, or relationship to barratry — a gap researchers should note. The absence of elaboration is itself informative: by the time these dictionaries were compiled, BARET had long since passed out of active legal usage and survived only as a curiosity of legal history.

BARETmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Fr. A wrangling suit. Britt. c. 92. Co. Litt. 368 b. BARGA, Bargia. L. Lat. In old law. A barge. Spelman. Towns. Pl. 226. The members of the legal profession, collectively, are figuratively called the bar, BARGAIN AND SALE. In conveyfrom the place which they usually occupy ancing. The transferring of the property of in court. This was as early as Keilw. 40. a thing from one to another, upon valuable See Barre. The same figurative use of the consideration, by way of sale. Shep. Touch. term has led, in England, to the distinction (by Preston), 221. between practitioners at the bar, including The instrument, conveyance or assurance barristers in the proper sense, and practiby which such transfer is made. Id. ibid. tioners under the bar, comprising special-A kind of real contract, whereby the pleaders and conveyancers. Warren's Law bargainor, for some pecuniary consideration, Studies, 1, note, (Am. ed.) Attorneys are bargains and sells, that is, contracts to conconsidered as being always present in court. vey the land to the bargainee, and becomes 1 Tidd's Pr. 80. by such a bargain a trustee for, or seised to the use of the bargainee; and then the statute of uses completes the purchase. 2 Bl. Com. 388.-A contract, in consideration of money, or other valuable consideration, passing an estate in lands and tenements, by deed indented and enrolled. Bac. Abr. Bargain and sale.