Definition
A Latin maxim meaning "from time to time, and at all times." The phrase conveys an obligation, condition, or right that is both recurring and perpetual — not a one-time duty, but one that attaches continuously and repeats whenever the relevant circumstances arise. It appears in older pleading and conveyancing contexts to express that a party's obligation or entitlement is unlimited in temporal scope, covering every occasion and moment at which it might become applicable.
Common Language
This phrase has no modern common English usage. It is pure Latin legal vocabulary, encountered almost exclusively in historical pleading forms and antiquarian legal texts. No Wiktionary or Webster's 1913 entry exists for this phrase as an ordinary expression. Researchers encountering it in historical documents should treat it as a term of art from the pleading tradition, not as general Latin to be interpreted by translation alone.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a marker of a specific tradition in common law pleading. When it appears in historical pleadings, writs, or conveyancing instruments, it signals an attempt to foreclose temporal limitation arguments — a drafter's device to prevent an opponent from arguing that an obligation had lapsed, become dormant, or attached only on one occasion. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should be alert to several issues.
First, this phrase is concentrated in early pleading form books and treatises on the technical craft of drafting. Its natural habitat is the kind of formulaic language found in precedent books, not in substantive legal argument. Encountering it in a primary source is often a sign that the document follows a standard form rather than expressing a novel legal proposition.
Second, the phrase's meaning is precise but its implications depend entirely on context. "From time to time" (de tempore in tempus) captures the recurring nature of the duty; "at all times" (ad omnia tempora) captures its perpetual reach. Together, they constitute the strongest possible temporal affirmation a drafter could embed. In a covenant or pleading, this combination would be read as closing off any argument based on passage of time or change of circumstance.
Third, because this phrase belongs to the Latin pleading tradition that was largely abolished or superseded by procedural reforms in both England and the United States during the nineteenth century, modern legal sources will not use it. Researchers should not expect to find it in post-reform materials. Its presence in a document is itself a dating clue.
Fourth, the single substantive cross-reference in the available historical dictionary literature points to Townsend's work on pleading, a recognized authority on common law pleading forms. Researchers seeking to understand the phrase in context should locate that treatise tradition rather than searching for case-by-case judicial interpretation, which is unlikely to exist in any volume.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the sole dictionary entry located in the available sources: "From time to time, and at all times," with a citation to Townsh. Pl. 17 — a reference to a pleading treatise in the Townsend tradition. This entry is spare, as is typical for Latin maxims in Black's supplemental material, which often functions more as a glossary of encountered phrases than as an analytical reference.
The entry confirms the phrase's home in pleading literature rather than in substantive doctrine. No definition, no limiting principle, and no case law appears — because the phrase functions as a formulaic intensifier within a pleading, not as a freestanding legal rule. Historical dictionaries generally treat such Latin phrases as translation items; they do not analyze their legal effect in depth. Researchers should not expect earlier dictionaries such as Bouvier, Jacob, or Tomlins to develop the concept further, though similar phrases appear in that vocabulary.
What the historical sources collectively miss is any account of how courts actually responded when this language appeared in a pleading that was challenged. Whether the phrase successfully foreclosed temporal defenses in any particular instance would require research in reported cases from the relevant period and jurisdiction, not in the dictionary literature.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase belongs to the English common law pleading tradition and was carried into early American practice through adoption of common law forms. Because it is tied to procedural forms abolished by nineteenth-century reforms — in England by the Common Law Procedure Acts, in the United States largely by the Field Code and successor rules of civil procedure — jurisdictional variation in its modern legal effect is not a live research question. It is a historical artifact across all common law jurisdictions.