Definition
Delegare is a Latin term from Roman civil law with two principal applications:
1. (English law) To assign, transfer, or commit a duty or power to another; to appoint a substitute or deputy; to commission another to act in one's place. Used in older English legal texts to describe the act of delegation broadly.
2. (Civil law / Roman law) To substitute another person as a debtor in one's place — that is, to put a new debtor before one's creditor in satisfaction or replacement of the original obligation. The classical formulation preserved in Burrill captures this precisely: Delegare est vice suâ alium reum dare creditori vel cui jusserit — "To delegate is to give to a creditor, or to him whom the creditor appoints, another person in one's place as debtor."
These two meanings are related but distinct in operation. The first is administrative or governmental in character; the second is transactional and touches the law of obligations.
Common Confusion
The English legal sense of delegare — transferring authority or a duty to another — maps loosely onto the modern concept of delegation and can be confused with related civil-law mechanisms. However, the Roman civil-law sense of delegare is more specific and more transactional: it describes a trilateral substitution in which a debtor (the delegant) directs a third party (the delegatee) to assume an obligation owed to a creditor (the delegee). This is not simply assigning a task; it is restructuring a debt relationship. Researchers who encounter delegare in texts dealing with Roman obligations should be alert to this technical meaning, which does not carry over automatically into common-law contexts. The term can also be confused with novation, though the two concepts overlap without being identical — delegatio was one recognized mode by which novation could be achieved in Roman law, but delegatio did not always extinguish the original obligation.
Why It Matters in Research
Delegare appears primarily in two research contexts, and conflating them produces error.
In English legal sources — particularly those drawing on Bracton and other medieval jurists influenced by Roman forms — delegare is used in the broad administrative sense: a judge delegates jurisdiction, a lord delegates authority. Burrill cites Bracton fol. 108b directly. Researchers working with Bracton-era materials should understand that this usage borrows the Roman vocabulary without always carrying the full civil-law freight of the term.
In civil-law and Roman-law sources, delegare is a term of art in the law of obligations. The delegatio debitoris (delegation of a debtor) was a recognized mechanism for novation and plays a role in civilian discussions of assignment, assumption of debt, and suretyship. The distinction between delegatio perfecta (where the original debt is extinguished) and imperfect delegation (where it survives alongside the new obligation) matters for tracing the historical roots of modern doctrines in civilian jurisdictions.
Researchers using Law Mind's civil-law or historical English materials should note that delegare can appear in either register. The surrounding context — whether the text concerns governance and authority or debtor-creditor relationships — is usually dispositive.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is compact but carefully structured, separating the English-law sense from the civil-law sense. Burrill provides the classical Latin maxim in full, which is a reliable indicator that he is drawing on the Digest or a civilian gloss tradition for the second definition. The Bracton citation anchors the first definition in medieval English practice.
What Burrill's entry does not address is the distinction between delegatio perfecta and imperfect delegation — a refinement found in civilian treatises and Roman-law scholarship that would be relevant to any researcher tracing the doctrinal history of novation or assignment. Researchers should supplement Burrill with civilian-facing sources for that dimension. Burrill's entry is also silent on the related term delegatio in its broader procedural Roman-law sense (transfer of jurisdiction), though the English-law definition he provides implicitly encompasses that usage.
Jurisdictional Note
Delegare as a term of art belongs primarily to Roman-law and civil-law scholarship. In common-law jurisdictions, the concept it describes in the English-law sense is captured by the modern term delegation. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or other mixed or civilian jurisdictions may encounter delegare or its derivatives in annotated codes or historical commentaries as a technical term with operative legal significance.