Definition
A Latin term from old legal practice meaning "to certify" or "to make certain." Used as a verb in medieval and early modern legal instruments and court records, certificare denoted the formal act of one official or court giving authoritative information or notification to another — making a fact or matter certain in the eyes of the law. It appears most frequently in the language of writs, returns, and judicial communications, where one tribunal or officer was directed to inform another of the state of a proceeding, the identity of a party, or the nature of a record.
The term is the Latin root from which the English legal vocabulary of certification — certify, certificate, certiorari — ultimately derives.
Common Confusion
Certificare should not be confused with certiorari, though the two share a root and a conceptual origin. Certiorari became a developed writ with its own doctrine, procedural requirements, and modern constitutional significance. Certificare, by contrast, remained a functional Latin verb describing the act of certifying — it never became a standalone writ or procedural device. The relationship is that of root to branch: certificare names the act; certiorari names the writ that commanded the act in a specific appellate context.
Researchers encountering certificare in a writ should read it as a directive verb — "shall certify" or "is to make certain" — rather than as a reference to certiorari procedure.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-modern English or continental European legal records, Year Books, or early chancery and common law pleadings will encounter certificare as an operative verb in writ language and judicial mandates. It does not appear as a standalone doctrine but as a functional command or description within formal instruments.
The primary research significance is etymological and structural: recognizing certificare in a Latin writ or instrument helps decode what the instrument required of its recipient. Where a writ commanded a lower official or court to certificare the issuing authority, the obligation was to produce a formal, authoritative communication — not merely to inform, but to render something legally certain. This is the conceptual foundation of the modern writ of certiorari and the broader family of certification procedures.
Researchers tracing the history of appellate practice, interlocutory review, or inter-court communications will find certificare a useful anchor point. Its appearance in a record signals a moment where certainty was being formally established or transmitted across institutional boundaries — a concern that runs directly into the development of the certiorari writ and certified questions of law.
Because the term is purely Latin and belongs to old practice, it drops out of English-language legal records as Law French and legal Latin gave way to English pleading. Researchers should not expect to find it in American sources. Its domain is exclusively pre-modern English, ecclesiastical, and civil law records.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary offers a compact but accurate entry, correctly identifying the Latin roots (certus, certain + facere, to make) and glossing the term as "to certify; to make certain; to give information." The phrasing "to give information" is slightly imprecise — the force of certificare in practice was stronger than ordinary information-giving. The act was authoritative and formal, not merely communicative. Burrill's gloss captures the functional meaning adequately for a reference entry but does not develop the connection to certiorari or the broader writ vocabulary, which is where the term's lasting legal significance lies.
Other historical law dictionaries do not appear to add substantially different glosses. The term's usage was stable and its meaning uncontested; it is an archaic operative verb, not a contested legal concept, and historical dictionary treatment reflects that.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Certiorari — for the developed writ form and its modern procedural significance.
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Writs, Common Law — for the broader family of instruments in which certificare appears as operative language.