Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "for good and ill" or "for good and evil." In English legal practice, *bono et malo* (more fully rendered as *de bono et malo*) designated a special writ of jail delivery that formerly issued as a matter of course for each particular prisoner held in custody. The writ directed that a prisoner be brought before the appropriate court to be tried on all matters — both favorable and unfavorable — pending against them. Unlike a general jail delivery addressing multiple prisoners at once, the writ *de bono et malo* was individual and particularized, issuing routinely upon application rather than by special judicial discretion.
The phrase also appears in two related maxims of legal reasoning:
1. *Bonum defendentis ex integra causa; malum ex quolibet defectu* — The success of a defendant depends on a perfect case; his loss arises from some defect.
2. *Bonum necessarium extra terminos necessitatis non est bonum* — A good thing required by necessity is not good beyond the limits of that necessity.
These maxims stand somewhat apart from the procedural writ sense and appear in doctrinal argument rather than process.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Bono* and *malo* are Latin adjective forms of *bonus* (good) and *malus* (bad/evil), familiar in English largely through ecclesiastical, philosophical, and rhetorical contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): *Bono et malo* does not appear as a standalone entry in general English dictionaries of the period; the component words were recognized as Latin borrowings denoting good and evil in moral or theological discourse.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant. In ordinary usage the phrase carries a moral or philosophical register — good versus evil. In legal usage it is a procedural term of art describing the comprehensive scope of a jail delivery writ, with no moral content at all. A researcher encountering the phrase in a legal source should not read it as an ethical characterization of the prisoner or the proceeding.
Common Confusion
*Bono et malo* is sometimes conflated with the broader category of jail delivery generally, or with *habeas corpus*. The distinction matters: habeas corpus challenged the lawfulness of detention itself, while the writ *de bono et malo* assumed detention and moved the prisoner to trial on all pending matters. The two writs could be sought in similar circumstances but had different procedural grounds and effects. Researchers should also distinguish the writ from a general commission of jail delivery issued at assizes, which swept all prisoners collectively rather than issuing for a named individual.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research challenge with *bono et malo* is that the writ was largely obsolete by the time most American legal practice consolidated, making it a term encountered in historical English sources — particularly in Blackstone's *Commentaries* — rather than in American case law or statute. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English criminal procedure records will encounter it; those working in American materials after the early national period almost certainly will not.
In the Law Mind corpus, Burrill's Law Dictionary redirects the reader to *De bono et malo*, signaling that the full-form Latin phrase is the preferred search term in older sources. Researchers should query both the abbreviated and full-form versions when searching historical digests and abridgments.
The two maxims associated with this phrase — particularly *bonum defendentis ex integra causa* — have a separate documentary life in English legal argument and appear in Coke's reports, meaning researchers may encounter the phrase in an entirely non-procedural context when browsing seventeenth-century case material. The risk of conflation is real when scanning rather than reading closely.
There is minimal American jurisdictional footprint for this writ. It is an artifact of English common law procedure that did not transplant into American practice in recognizable form.
Historical Dictionary Support
The source dictionaries converge on a single core meaning: *de bono et malo* was a special, individual writ of jail delivery. Blackstone's *Commentaries* (4 Bl. Comm. 270) is the uniform citation anchor across Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's, indicating that all three drew from the same primary source rather than independently synthesizing practice. This is useful for researchers: the uniformity reflects textbook transmission of a procedure that had already receded from active practice by the time these dictionaries were compiled.
Burrill is the most useful of the historical dictionaries for navigation, explicitly cross-referencing *De bono et malo* and thereby confirming the variant form researchers should also search.
None of the historical dictionaries treat the associated Latin maxims with any depth in the entries sourced here, though *bonum defendentis ex integra causa* appears in Coke and was circulating in legal argument well before these dictionaries were compiled. Researchers should not expect dictionary entries to substitute for primary source investigation of these maxims.
What the historical dictionaries uniformly omit is any discussion of when and why the writ fell out of use, or how jail delivery functions were absorbed into other procedural mechanisms. For that history, researchers must look beyond the dictionary shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ *de bono et malo* was an English common law process and has no meaningful independent existence in American law. It appears in American legal dictionaries primarily for historical completeness and for the benefit of researchers working with English authorities.