DELATURA

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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DELATURAAuthored
The Law Mind • 640 words
Definition
In old English law, delatura referred to the reward paid to an informer — that is, the payment or compensation given to a person who formally accused or denounced another to legal authorities. Burrill's Law Dictionary extends the meaning slightly to include the accusation itself, treating delatura as encompassing both the act of informing and the recompense that followed from it. The term is a Latin borrowing from medieval English legal usage and appears in early Anglo-Saxon law texts, including the Laws of Henry I and the Laws of Ine as collected by Brompton. ---
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of purely historical legal significance. Researchers will encounter delatura almost exclusively in: 1. Transcriptions and commentaries on early English legal codes, particularly Anglo-Saxon compilations and post-Conquest Latin legal manuscripts. 2. Secondary discussions of the informer system in medieval English law, where private accusation and public reward intersected. 3. Older legal dictionaries and glossaries written before the 20th century, which catalogued Latin and Law Latin terms from the pre-common-law tradition. No modern legal system uses this term in active practice. If delatura appears in a primary source you are researching, it signals that the document either originates from or is commenting on pre-Conquest or early medieval English legal arrangements. The dual meaning identified by Burrill — accusation and reward — is worth noting: context will determine which sense governs. Where the term appears in Latin legal texts alongside procedural language, it likely refers to the act of accusation; where it appears in provisions governing compensation or sharing of penalties, it refers to the informer's reward. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should treat delatura as a gateway term into the broader medieval English practice of informer-based prosecution, where detection and accusation of crimes was often privately incentivized rather than publicly administered. This system has conceptual connections to later qui tam actions and the common informer tradition, though the terminology does not carry forward. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: delatura is the reward of an informer in old English law, attributed uniformly to Whishaw's New Law Lexicon as a supporting reference. The definitions are strikingly brief across all four sources, suggesting the term was already archaic and non-controversial by the time these dictionaries were compiled. Burrill's entry is the most substantive, adding the additional gloss of "accusation" alongside "reward" and supplying specific legal citations — the Laws of Henry I (c. 46) and the Laws of Ine (c. 20) as preserved in Brompton's chronicle compilation. This dual sense (act plus compensation) is absent from the Black's and Bouvier's entries, which may simply reflect editorial compression rather than disagreement on substance. Researchers relying on Black's or Bouvier's alone will miss the procedural dimension of the term. No historical dictionary entry attempts a full contextual analysis of how delatura functioned within the early English legal system. For that, researchers must go beyond the dictionary sources and into scholarship on Anglo-Saxon law and its Latin textual tradition. ---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Informers and Common Informers; Anglo-Saxon and Early English Law. ---
Related Terms
Qui tam action — the later common-law mechanism allowing a private informer to sue on behalf of the Crown and share in the recovery; the functional descendant of informer-reward systems. Delator — the informer or accuser themselves; the person entitled to the delatura. Common informer — the English law category of private individuals who brought penal actions for statutory violationsoften for a share of the penalty. Accusation — the general act of which delaturain Burrill's usageis a specific medieval Latin form. Reward — the compensation element; see also statutes and provisions governing informer shares in penalty recoveries.
DELATURAmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
In old English law. The reward of an informer. Whishaw. DELECTUS PERSONÆ. Lat. Choice of the person. By this term is understood the right of a partner to exercise his choice and preference as to the admission of any new members to the firm, and as to the per- sons to be so admitted, if any. In Scotch law. The personal preference which is supposed to have been exercised by a landlord in selecting his tenant, by the members of a firm in making choice of part- ners, in the appointment of persons to office, and other cases. Nearly equivalent to per- sonal trust, as a doctrine in law. Bell. A sending away; a putting into commission; the assignment of a debt to another; the intrusting another with a general power to act for the good of those who depute him. At common law. The transfer of au- thority by one person to another; the act of making or commissioning a delegate. The whole body of delegates or representa- tives sent to a convention or assembly from one district, place, or political unit are col- lectively spoken of as a "delegation." In the civil law. A species of novation which consists in the change of one debtor for another, when he who is indebted substi- tutes a third person who obligates himself in his stead to the creditor, so that the first debtor is acquitted and his obligation extin- guished, and the creditor contents himself with the obligation of the second debtor. Delegation is essentially distinguished from any other species of novation, in this: that the former demands the consent of all three parties, but the latter that only of the two parties to the new debt. 1 Domat, § 2318; 48 Miss. 454. Delegation is novation effected by the in- tervention of another person whom the debt- or, in order to be liberated from his cred- itor, gives to such creditor, or to him whom the creditor appoints; and such person so given becomes obliged to the creditor in the place of the original debtor. Burge, Sur. 173. Delegatus non potest delegare. A del- egate cannot delegate; an agent cannot dele- gate his functions to a subagent without the knowledge or consent of the principal; the person to whom an office or duty is delegated cannot lawfully devolve the duty on anoth- er, unless he be expressly authorized so to do. 9 Coke, 77; Broom, Max. 840; 2 Kent,
DELATURAmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
In Old English Law. Thereward of an informer. Whishaw.
DELATURAmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867
L. Lat. In old English law. An accusation; the reward of an informer. LL. Hen. I. c. 46. LL. Inæ, c. 20, apud Brompton. Whishaw. DELECTUS PERSONÆ. Lat. The choice of a person. A term applied, in the law of partnership, to the right of a partner to choose or determine what persons shall be introduced into the firm as new partners. Story on Partn. §§ 5, 195. In Scotch law. The presumed choice of a person, which the grantor of certain deeds is supposed to have for the person in whose favor the right is granted. Bell's Dict.

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