Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "common." Used in early English legal texts and Year Books as a direct transliteration of the French word for "common," it appears most often in compound phrases drawn from the Law French tradition. The most noted instance is *comon erudic'* (comon erudition), meaning "common learning" — a phrase denoting established or uncontested points of law so familiar to practitioners that they required no further authority or argument.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *comon* in historical sources are almost certainly reading Law French material, most likely Year Books or early English reports compiled before English displaced Law French as the language of pleading and legal record. The term itself is not a legal concept with independent doctrinal weight; it is a linguistic artifact. Its significance is navigational: its presence signals that the surrounding text belongs to the Year Book tradition and should be read accordingly.
The compound *comon erudic'* (abbreviated in sources, as Burrill's citation to Dyer illustrates) deserves particular attention. When a Year Book or early reporter invokes "common learning," it is doing something functionally significant — it is treating a legal proposition as so well-settled that no case authority is needed. A modern researcher who encounters this phrase should not expect a citation chain to follow. The proposition was regarded as axiomatic within the profession of its era. This can frustrate efforts to trace the origin of a doctrine: the very familiarity that made citation unnecessary is what obscures the rule's origin from later researchers.
The abbreviation *erudic'* (for *erudition*) is a further trap. Manuscript and early print conventions in Law French routinely truncated words, and researchers unfamiliar with the abbreviation system may misread or fail to recognize the phrase entirely. Standard guides to Law French abbreviations and paleographic aids should be consulted when working through Year Book materials where *comon* appears.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry concisely: *comon* is Law French for "common," and the primary compound given is *comon erudic'*, glossed as "common learning; familiar law," with citation to Dyer 27b (French edition). This is the sole significant historical dictionary treatment located in the Law Mind corpus.
The entry is narrow but accurate. Burrill correctly identifies both the linguistic origin and the practical legal use. What the entry does not address — and what researchers should supply from context — is the broader procedural and rhetorical function of invoking "common learning" in Year Book practice: it was a professional convention for closing off argument on a point, not merely a description of the point's familiarity.
No meaningful divergence among historical sources exists here, since the term is essentially absent from later legal dictionaries that postdate the Law French era. Its disappearance from the lexicon tracks the decline of Law French in legal practice.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is exclusively a feature of the English legal tradition and its derivative systems during the Law French period. It has no independent meaning in Scots law, civil law jurisdictions, or modern American practice, where it would appear only in quotation from historical sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Common (Right of)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Year Books
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Law French