CAS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

CASAuthored

The Law Mind • 753 words

Definition

"Cas" is an Old French and Anglo-Norman legal term meaning "case," "event," or "occurrence." It appears in Law French phrases embedded in early common law texts, writs, and pleading records, and is not a standalone substantive legal term in modern usage. Its significance lies entirely in its presence within fixed phrases — particularly in Britton and similar medieval legal treatises — where it signals the conditional logic of legal rules: if a particular event or circumstance arises, a specific legal consequence follows.

The term should not be confused with the modern abbreviation "cas." (casual) or with the acronym CAS as used in administrative, sports arbitration, or other modern legal contexts.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Abbreviation of "casual."

Historical common usage: Not separately defined in Webster's 1913 as a legal term; in general usage, "case" carried its ordinary English sense of a set of circumstances or an instance of something.

The gap here is one of register and era, not semantic drift. "Cas" is not a word modern English speakers would encounter outside of historical legal texts. A researcher who sees "cas" in a digitized primary source is reading Law French, not a truncated modern word. Treating it as an abbreviation or a typographical artifact would be a misreading.

Common Confusion

"Cas" as Law French should not be conflated with "case" as a term of art in modern procedure (a matter pending before a court), nor with the phrase "action on the case" (trespass on the case), which is a distinct form of action with its own doctrinal history. The phonetic and orthographic similarity can cause researchers using keyword search in historical corpora to surface irrelevant results, or conversely to miss relevant ones depending on how a text has been transcribed.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English legal sources — particularly Year Books, Britton, Fleta, or early common law pleading manuals — will encounter "cas" as a component of Law French phrases. Two practical traps arise.

First, OCR and transcription errors are common. Historical digitization projects sometimes render "cas" as "car," "can," or "cas." (with a period suggesting abbreviation), which can disrupt full-text search. Searching variant spellings and surrounding context words (such as "aveigne," "semblables," or "en ceo") improves recall.

Second, the phrase "en ceo cas et en cas semblables" — "in this case and the like cases" — is a formula of extension by analogy, important for understanding how medieval jurists reasoned about novel fact patterns. Its appearance in a source is a signal that the author is generalizing a rule, not merely describing a single instance. Researchers tracing the development of analogical reasoning in common law pleading should flag these phrases.

The Burrill entry situates "cas" within the broader development of the forms of action, noting the connection to Story on the Constitution and Kent's Commentaries. This places even this small Law French term within the larger trajectory from rigid writ-based pleading toward a more flexible case-based system — a transition central to understanding the history of civil procedure.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical dictionary source here, and its treatment is characteristic of nineteenth-century legal lexicography: terse, citation-heavy, and philologically aware. Burrill identifies "cas" as French, gives its core meanings (case, event, occurrence), and immediately illustrates with two phrases drawn from Britton (c. 75). The entry is embedded within a larger discussion of "capture" and "case," reflecting the dictionary's organizational logic of clustering related terms.

What Burrill does not do — and what no historical dictionary fully does — is explain the functional role of these phrases in pleading practice. The formulas involving "cas" were operative language in writs and arguments, not merely descriptive vocabulary. Researchers relying solely on Burrill will understand what "cas" means but not why its appearance in a specific document matters procedurally.

Kent's Commentaries and Story on the Constitution, cited by Burrill, address the broader jurisprudential context of "cases and controversies" — a doctrinal development that eventually absorbed the older Law French sense into constitutional vocabulary. That connection, implicit in Burrill, repays attention.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Actions on the Case; Forms of Action; Law French

CASmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

( 253 ) capture. Brande. Tomlins. 1 Kent's Com. 68. Fr. Case; a, or the case; an event or occurrence. En ceo cas et en cas semblables; in this case and the like cases. Britt. c. 75. Si cas aveigne; if the case happen. Id. ibid. (254) courts by a party who asserts his rights in the form prescribed by law. Story on Const. § 1646, (b. 3, ch. 38.) See 1 Kent's Com. 325, 326. 9 Wheaton's R. 819. Peters' R. 224. Bartley, C. J. (dissenting) 6 Ohio St. R. 357, 358. CASE, [Lat. casus, Fr. cas.], or TRES- (255) To quash, or make void, (irritum reddere) ; to annul. Ducange. Donum suum penitus cassetur; his gift shall be entirely annulled. Mag. Chart. 9 Hen. III. c. 36. Cassabitur breve; the writ shall be quashed. Fleta, lib. 5, c. 6, § 47. Cassata; quashed, as pleas, (exceptiones). Bract. fol. 394. To abate. Towns. Pl. 26, 59. (256) In um, from Lat. castigare, to correct. old English law. An engine of correction for the punishment of scolds or unquiet women; otherwise called the cucking stool, trebucket, and tumbrel. 4 Bl. Com. 168, 169. Fleta, lib. 2, c. 12, § 29. See Castigatorium, Cucking stool. CASTLEGUARD, Castelgard, Castleward. [L. Lat. castelgardum, castelli guardia, wardum castri, custodia castri.] In feudal and old English law. The defence or guard of a castle, otherwise called watch and ward. A species of feudal service or tenure; a kind of tenure by knight's service. Spelman, voc. Castelgardum. Termes de la Ley. Litt. sect. 111. Co. Litt. 82 b. The service was sometimes changed into an annual rent, and then the tenure became a tenure in socage. 4 Co. 88; Luttrel's case. See 3 How. St. Trials, 866. An imposition anciently laid upon such persons as lived within a certain distance of any castle, towards the maintenance of such as watched and warded the castle. Magna Charta, c. 20. Stat. 32 Hen. VIII. c. 48. Cowell. The circuit itself, inhabited by such as were subject to this service. Cowell. Blount. Termes de la Ley.

casadj

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Abbreviation of casual.

CASnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Initialism of channel-associated signalling. | Initialism of combat armor suit, used for a powered, armed and armored exoskeleton, in fiction and military research. | Initialism of calibrated airspeed. | Acronym of collision avoidance system. | Acronym of close air support. | Initialism of computer algebra system. | Initialism of complex adaptive system. | Initialism of compare and swap. | Initialism of cowboy action shooting.

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