Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "by the advice of the court" or "by the direction of the court." It appears in historical legal records and pleadings to indicate that a procedural act, order, or step was taken at the court's direction rather than solely at the initiative of a party. The phrase signals that the court itself exercised guidance or oversight over the action noted.
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Common Confusion
The phrase may be confused with *de curia* (of the court, pertaining to the court) or with *ex officio* (from the office, by virtue of one's office), both of which describe court-connected actions. The distinction is that *de concilio curlæ* specifically attributes the act to the court's deliberate advice or direction, while *ex officio* emphasizes the authority or capacity in which an officer acts. Researchers should also note that *curlæ* in this phrase is a variant rendering of *curiæ* and the two should be treated as equivalent for research purposes.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a navigational marker in historical court records. Researchers encountering it in early English or American legal documents should read it as a notation that the immediately surrounding action — a continuance, an amendment, an appointment, a procedural correction — was court-directed rather than party-initiated. This distinction can matter when reconstructing the procedural history of a case, as it may indicate the court was exercising supervisory or equitable oversight rather than responding to motion.
The phrase appears most commonly in records predating the standardization of modern procedural terminology. As common law pleading was displaced by code pleading in the nineteenth century and later by rules-based civil procedure in the twentieth, Latin notational phrases of this kind fell out of routine use. Researchers working in pre-code records — particularly colonial, early republic, and English common law materials — will encounter it more frequently than those working in modern sources.
Because the phrase describes a general relationship between court and act rather than a distinct legal doctrine or right, it is unlikely to appear as a subject heading in legal indexes or digests. Researchers should search for it as a phrase within transcribed records rather than expecting it to anchor a discrete body of case law. Variant spellings, abbreviations, and Anglicized renderings are common in manuscript court records; the spelling "curlæ" may appear as "curiæ" in more carefully edited sources, the latter being the standard Latin genitive for "of the court."
Note the distinction from the closely related phrase *de cursu* (of course, meaning by right or as a matter of routine procedure), which describes acts taken as a matter of established procedural right rather than by express court direction.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only historical dictionary entry in the source material, defining the phrase briefly as "by the advice (or direction) of the court." The dual translation — advice or direction — reflects a meaningful ambiguity in the Latin *concilium*, which can carry connotations ranging from counsel and recommendation to formal direction and command. Black's does not elaborate on the procedural contexts in which the phrase was used, nor does it distinguish between advisory and mandatory senses.
Researchers should be aware that historical dictionaries of this era often provide minimal entries for Latin notational phrases on the assumption that their readers possessed working Latin and needed only a quick gloss rather than doctrinal explanation. The brevity of the Black's entry is characteristic rather than exceptional. Earlier law dictionaries in the Tomlin and Bouvier tradition similarly treat such Latin phrases as self-explanatory to a legally trained readership.
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