Definition
In old Swedish law, a child conceived as a result of rape who was nevertheless granted legitimate legal status. The term translates literally as "child of a struggle" (Latin: *filius lucta*). Under the legal framework it describes, conception following sexual assault did not disqualify the child from legitimacy — the child was recognized as legitimate by operation of law, notwithstanding the circumstances of conception.
This is a historical term of Scandinavian legal origin with no modern legal counterpart. It appears exclusively in the context of old Swedish customary and statutory law and is encountered in legal dictionaries and comparative legal history rather than in any active legal practice.
Why It Matters in Research
BRUKBARN is a term a researcher will encounter only when working in comparative legal history, the history of legitimacy doctrine, or the influence of Nordic customary law on later European legal systems. Its appearance in Black's and Burrill's signals that nineteenth-century American legal lexicographers were compiling comparative and historical material drawn from Continental and Scandinavian sources — not that the term had any operative legal significance in common law jurisdictions.
Researchers should note that the term's presence in Black's derives directly from Burrill, which in turn traces to Barrington's *Observations on the More Ancient Statutes* citing Stiernhook's *De Jure Sueonum et Gothorum Vetusto* (lib. 2, cap. 9). The chain of citation is thin: Barrington is an eighteenth-century English commentator on antiquarian statutes, and Stiernhook is a seventeenth-century Swedish legal historian. Neither source is readily accessible in most American research libraries, and secondary treatment in English is sparse.
The legitimacy rule embedded in the term — that a child of rape could be made legitimate — sits at the intersection of two historically fraught legal questions: (1) the legal consequences of illegitimacy, and (2) the law's treatment of sexual violence and its victims. Researchers working on the history of either subject should treat BRUKBARN as a marker pointing toward Scandinavian customary law rather than as evidence of any broader common law principle.
There is no modern American or English legal doctrine that uses or incorporates this term. Do not extrapolate from it to contemporary legitimacy or paternity law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on the substantive definition. All three sources offer the same core statement: a child conceived after rape who was made legitimate, glossed as "child of a struggle." Black's both editions appear to copy Burrill without independent elaboration.
Burrill adds the more complete citation chain, identifying Barrington's *Observations on the More Ancient Statutes* as the English-language intermediary source and Stiernhook as the underlying authority. This is useful: it gives the researcher an actual path into the primary material. Burrill also supplies the Latin equivalent *filius lucta*, which may assist researchers searching Latin-language sources or civilian legal treatises.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the precise legal mechanism by which legitimacy was conferred (was it automatic by law, or did it require a formal act?), whether the rule was universal across Swedish jurisdictions or regional, and what happened to the rule after Sweden's legal modernization. These gaps are significant. The dictionaries treat BRUKBARN as a curiosity of comparative law rather than as a term requiring doctrinal unpacking.
Jurisdictional Note
This term has no application in any current common law jurisdiction. It is a term of old Swedish customary law only. Researchers encountering it in American or English legal sources are seeing comparative or historical annotation, not operative legal authority.