Definition
A Latin term from Roman law meaning "they have decreed." CENSUERE was the formal term of art designating the judgment, resolution, or decree of the Roman Senate (senatus consultum). As a verb form in the third-person plural perfect indicative, it expressed the completed collective act of senatorial deliberation — that the Senate, as a body, had reached and issued a binding determination. The term appears in legal and historical texts as the technical marker distinguishing an official senatorial decree from deliberation still in progress or from the opinions of individual senators.
Common Confusion
CENSUERE is sometimes encountered alongside the related term CENSERE (to estimate, assess, or vote). The distinction matters: CENSERE refers to the act or power of individual senatorial judgment and voting, while CENSUERE records the completed collective result — the decree as issued. Burrill's Law Dictionary explicitly cross-references CENSERE, and researchers working with Roman law texts should treat the two as related but not interchangeable. CENSUERE is the enacted output; CENSERE is the deliberative process.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with Roman civil law, and its primary research relevance is as a marker of Roman legislative and quasi-legislative procedure. Researchers encountering CENSUERE in historical legal texts should understand it as a term of procedural art, not a substantive legal concept with surviving doctrinal content. Its presence in a text signals that the passage concerns a senatorial decree — a senatus consultum — rather than legislation by popular assembly (lex) or praetorian edict.
The key navigational point: CENSUERE does not migrate into English common law, equity, or ecclesiastical law traditions. Its appearance in American or English legal dictionaries is a function of those dictionaries' Roman law glossaries, not evidence that the term carried operative meaning in Anglo-American courts. Researchers working in common law contexts who encounter this term in a dictionary source should treat it as background reference rather than a searchable legal concept with case law or statutory application.
Burrill's cross-reference to CENSERE is a useful pointer — following that entry will lead to the broader Roman law framework of senatorial power and the census function, which may be relevant for researchers tracing the intellectual history of legislative authority or the concept of public law in civil law systems.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in full agreement on this term. All three sources provide the same core definition — "they have decreed," the technical term for the judgment or decree of the Roman Senate — and all three cite the same authority: Taylor's Elements of the Civil Law (abbreviated as "Tayl. Civil Law" or "Tayl. Civ. Law") at page 566. This uniformity reflects the heavily derivative character of nineteenth-century American legal dictionary treatment of Roman law terms, where editors drew from a common pool of civil law authorities rather than independent scholarship.
None of the three sources expand beyond the one-sentence gloss. This is appropriate given the term's narrow function as procedural vocabulary rather than a doctrinal concept requiring extended treatment. Researchers should note that Taylor's Elements of the Civil Law is the underlying primary reference and, where deeper treatment is needed, that work (or primary Roman sources such as the Digest) should be consulted directly rather than relying on the dictionary gloss alone.
Jurisdictional Note
CENSUERE has no operative significance in any common law jurisdiction. It is a term of Roman law with historical and comparative relevance only. Civil law jurisdictions in the modern sense do not use this term as living legal vocabulary.