CHASCUN

Definition

An Old French (Law French) term meaning "every" or "each." Used in medieval legal texts and Norman-derived legal instruments to indicate universality or all-inclusiveness within a class or category. Equivalent in function to the Latin "omnis" or "unusquisque" in the same corpus of source material. ---

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Chascun" is an archaic or Old French form; modern French uses "chacun," meaning "each one" or "everyone." Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed; the term had already receded entirely from English common usage by the nineteenth century. Editorial note: Unlike most Law French survivals that entered English legal vocabulary (such as "voir dire" or "cestui que"), "chascun" did not persist as a term of art in modern legal English. Its appearance in sources is strictly a signal of textual antiquity, not of a living legal concept. ---

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encounter "chascun" almost exclusively in one context: primary sources and commentaries drawing on the Assizes of Jerusalem or other Norman-era and Crusader-state legal compilations. Burrill cites it directly from the Assizes of Jerusalem, chapter ix — an early thirteenth-century feudal code of the Latin East, compiled in French and reflecting Norman legal culture transplanted to the Crusader kingdoms. This is a narrow but important bibliographic signal. When you see "chascun" in a source, treat it as a marker of stratum: the text is either an original Norman or Anglo-Norman legal document, a direct transcription of such a document, or a scholarly commentary engaging those primary sources. It will not appear in post-medieval English common law reports, statutes, or equity proceedings — if it does, something unusual is happening editorially and the provenance of the document warrants scrutiny. For corpus navigation purposes, note that Burrill's entry is minimal — a one-line gloss tethered to a citation. This is typical of how historical dictionaries handled Law French vocabulary that had no living doctrinal content: acknowledged but not developed. Researchers should not expect richer treatment in other nineteenth-century legal dictionaries such as Bouvier or Black's early editions, which similarly relegate pure Law French glossary terms to brief entries without substantive legal analysis. The practical trap is conflation with surrounding entries. In Burrill, "chascun" appears immediately adjacent to the entry for CHASE (chasea, chacea), a substantively important term in English land law. Researchers scanning the page for information on chase or forest law may absorb "chascun" without registering that it is a separate, unrelated entry — a vocabulary gloss, not a land-law concept. ---

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical shelf source providing a formal entry for this term, and the entry is entirely definitional: "L. Fr. Every." The citation to the Assizes of Jerusalem, chapter ix, is the only contextual anchor offered. No treatise, no case, no English statute employs the term in a way that generated further doctrinal development. The absence of the term from Bouvier's Law Dictionary and early editions of Black's Law Dictionary is itself informative. Those works were compiled for a practicing American bar with no reason to catalog inert Old French vocabulary. Burrill, with its more scholarly and historical orientation, preserved such terms as aids to reading older English and continental sources. Researchers relying exclusively on Bouvier or Black for Law French vocabulary will encounter gaps; Burrill and Termes de la Ley are the appropriate supplements for this stratum of the legal lexicon. ---

Jurisdictional Note

No jurisdictional variation is relevant. The term carries no substantive legal meaning in any modern jurisdiction and functions solely as a translation key for historical texts. ---

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