Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "by the advice" or "by the direction of the court." It describes an action taken under the guidance or at the express recommendation of a court, signifying that a party or officer proceeded not on independent authority but pursuant to judicial instruction or sanction.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in medieval and early common law contexts. Researchers encountering it in historical pleadings, reports, or treatises should understand it as a marker of court-directed conduct — relevant to questions of whether a party acted with judicial authorization, which could bear on liability, contempt, or the validity of procedural steps taken. Because the phrase is rare in modern legal writing, its appearance in a source is itself a dating signal: the document almost certainly predates the nineteenth century or is a scholarly treatment of early common law procedure.
The spelling variant in Black's — "curlæ" or rendered as "CURLZ" in some transcriptions — reflects the inconsistent Latinization and manuscript copying practices of the period. Researchers searching digitized historical corpora should use multiple spelling variants (curiæ, curlæ, curle) to avoid missing instances.
The primary source cited in Black's is Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (folio 345), one of the foundational treatises of English common law. Any researcher following this term into the primary literature will need access to Bracton, where the phrase appears in discussions of procedural conduct supervised by royal courts. Bracton's text is available in scholarly editions and digitized through the Harvard Law School Bracton Online project, which is the appropriate starting point.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides only a compressed entry: "By the advice or direction of the court," citing Bracton at folio 345. This is characteristic of Black's treatment of archaic Latin maxims — functional translation without doctrinal elaboration. No other major historical legal dictionary in the standard shelf (Bouvier, Tomlin, Cowell) appears to give this phrase independent treatment, suggesting it was not a term of art with sustained doctrinal life but rather a descriptive phrase used in Bracton's procedural analysis.
The reliance on a single early medieval source makes it difficult to trace any evolution of meaning. It does not appear to have generated a common law doctrine under its own name; rather, it describes a factual or procedural circumstance that might appear under various doctrinal headings depending on context. Researchers should treat it as a descriptive Latin phrase of limited independent legal force rather than as a term with a defined legal test or established body of case law.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is drawn from the English common law tradition via Bracton and has no independent doctrinal life in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. It is purely a historical term relevant to English medieval law.