Definition
A Latin maxim and writ-related phrase meaning "of obeying the law" or "for the purpose of obeying the law." The phrase appears in the context of writs and judicial process, denoting the obligation of a party to submit to or comply with the mandate of a court's writ or the law's command. It captures the formal requirement of legal obedience — that a person summoned or bound by legal process must yield to it.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow Latin phrase of primarily procedural and historical significance, appearing in medieval and early common law texts rather than in modern legal usage. Researchers encountering it will almost exclusively find it in Latin writs, early common law treatises, and the procedural literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its appearance in Fleta (c. 1290), one of the earliest systematic treatments of English common law procedure, places it firmly in the world of original writ practice — a system that modern procedural law has entirely replaced.
When reading early English procedural sources, the phrase signals a moment in the writ's operation where the law formally asserts the duty of compliance: the recipient of the writ is not merely notified but is bound de parendo juri. This distinction between notification and obligatory submission mattered considerably in early practice, where failure to appear or comply carried specific legal consequences tied to the nature of the writ.
Researchers working in the history of civil procedure, the development of contempt doctrine, or the origins of personal jurisdiction will find this phrase contextually useful. It sits at the conceptual root of later doctrines requiring parties to submit to judicial authority — a lineage that runs forward through contempt of court, service of process, and the constitutional dimensions of personal jurisdiction. However, the phrase itself rarely appears in later sources, so tracing that lineage requires working through the intermediate literature rather than finding direct usage.
The phrase also appears in discussions of outlawry and related sanctions. Refusal to comply — the inverse of de parendo juri — was among the conditions that could lead to a defendant being declared an outlaw, stripped of legal protection. Understanding the phrase therefore illuminates what was at stake when a party failed to obey.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry with characteristic economy: "Of, or for obeying the law; to obey the law; or the mandate of a writ," with a single citation to Fleta, lib. 2, c. 62, § 4. This is a thin but reliable reference. Fleta is a credible medieval source — a treatise written by an unknown author, likely while imprisoned in the Fleet Prison, drawing heavily on Bracton and contemporaneous royal court practice.
No other shelf sources in the Law Mind corpus provide entries for this phrase, which itself is informative: the phrase did not achieve the kind of independent doctrinal life that would have warranted treatment in later dictionaries like Black's or Bouvier's. Its significance is contextual rather than definitional — it is a phrase one encounters in a source, not a concept that generates its own body of law.
Researchers should note that Burrill's gloss is accurate as far as it goes but does not illuminate the procedural stakes of the phrase or its relationship to the broader architecture of writ practice. That context must be drawn from the primary sources and from treatise scholarship on medieval English procedure.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is specific to the English common law tradition and its medieval procedural system. It has no recognized usage in American, Scottish, or civilian legal traditions as an operative term.