Definition
An archaic legal term with two distinct historical meanings depending on jurisdiction:
1. (Old English law) A share or portion of land; used interchangeably with, or as a variant form of, champerty. The term referred to the division of land that was at the core of the champertous arrangement — the prohibited bargain by which a stranger financed litigation in exchange for a portion of the disputed property or its proceeds.
2. (Old Scots law) A gift or bribe received by a great man or judge from any person for the purpose of delaying a just action or advancing a wrongful one, whether the bribe consisted of land or movable goods. This Scots usage reflects a distinct legal concept closer to judicial corruption or perversion of justice than to the English doctrine of champerty as a litigation financing abuse.
The term is now entirely obsolete in active legal usage. Modern practice has absorbed its English meaning into the doctrine of champerty, and its Scots meaning into doctrines of bribery, judicial corruption, and abuse of process.
Common Confusion
CHAMPERT and CHAMPERTY are closely related but not identical. Champert is the older, narrower, and now obsolete form. Champerty (from the Latin campartia or Old French champart) became the settled English legal term for the broader doctrine prohibiting a party with no legitimate interest in a lawsuit from supporting or maintaining it in exchange for a share of any recovery. Champert appears in historical statutes and glossaries as a variant or precursor but should not be treated as a synonym for champerty in research without checking the source context. In Scots law, champert carried a meaning distinct from both — functioning as something closer to bribery of an official — making direct comparison across jurisdictions unreliable.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering champert in historical sources face two immediate traps. First, the English and Scots meanings are not equivalent, and a source's jurisdiction must be confirmed before interpreting the term. An English statute using champert is pointing toward land-division and litigation abuse; a Scots source is pointing toward official corruption. Conflating these produces misreading of the underlying legal concept.
Second, champert appears primarily in medieval and early modern sources — most prominently in connection with the Statute of Westminster II (13 Edw. I, c. 49) in the English context, and in Skene's De Verborum Significatione in the Scots context. Researchers working with pre-1800 English or Scots legal materials may encounter the term where a modern index would lead them to look under champerty or bribery instead. Law Mind corpus searches for champerty that do not also sweep for champert may miss relevant primary sources.
Third, the Scots definition sourced to Skene (and citing Stat. 2 Rob. Br.) is highly specialized. Skene's De Verborum Significatione (1597) is a Scots legal glossary, not a treatise with broad analytical authority. Weight given to Skene's definition should account for the nature of that source — a lexicographical work of its era, not a judicial or parliamentary exposition.
Finally, because champert is not a live term in any modern jurisdiction, its appearance in a source almost always signals that the source itself is historical, archaic, or translating from Latin or Law French. That signal has navigational value: it helps date and situate an unfamiliar document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's are in close agreement on both the English and Scots meanings, suggesting these definitions were settled in the secondary literature by the late nineteenth century rather than contested. All three sources treat the English meaning as a straightforward gloss on champerty and the Scots meaning as a distinct concept sourced to Skene.
Burrill's is the most useful of the three for research purposes: it provides the Latin form (campartia), the specific statutory reference (Stat. Westm. 2, c. 49), and the fuller Skene citation (Skene de Verb. Sign. citing Stat. 2 Rob. Br. c. dominus Rex, 22), giving researchers a path into primary sources that the Black's entries lack. The Black's entries, while accurate, function as compressed glosses rather than substantive analysis.
None of the three historical dictionaries addresses the doctrinal relationship between champert and the later, developed doctrine of champerty in any analytical depth. For that development, researchers must move beyond these entries to treatises on maintenance and champerty and to the Statute of Westminster II itself.
Jurisdictional Note
The English and Scots meanings of champert are functionally unrelated despite the shared term. English usage connects to the champerty doctrine and land-division arrangements in litigation financing. Scots usage connects to official corruption and bribery. Research crossing the England-Scotland border in historical sources should treat champert as a false friend requiring jurisdiction-specific confirmation before any conclusion is drawn.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Champerty and Maintenance
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Maintenance (Legal Doctrine)