Definition
A Latin verb meaning "to destroy." In old English law, destruere appears principally in the negative command of Magna Carta, Chapter 29: nullus liber homo capiatur aut aliquo modo destruatur — "no freeman shall be taken or in any manner destroyed." In this context, destruction is a term of art encompassing the most severe legal deprivations a sovereign could visit upon a subject, not merely physical annihilation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering destruere in medieval and early modern English legal texts should resist reading the word in its ordinary physical sense. The term carries a technical load defined by its Magna Carta context and subsequently narrowed — or rather, elaborated — by Lord Coke's authoritative gloss. When Coke unpacks destruatur in the Institutes, he is not summarizing the Latin but constructing a legal meaning that became operative in English constitutional argument for centuries. That constructed meaning — forejudgment of life or limb, disheritance, torture, or death — is the meaning lawyers and courts were working with, not a dictionary translation.
The phrase nullus liber homo capiatur aut aliquo modo destruatur was one of the most-cited clauses in English liberty arguments from the seventeenth century onward. Understanding that destruatur was interpreted expansively — any oppression against law by color of usurped authority qualifies as a "kind of destruction" per Coke — is essential when tracing due process and rule-of-law arguments through English and early American sources. The breadth Coke assigned to destruere is part of why Magna Carta Chapter 29 could be invoked in contexts far removed from imprisonment or execution.
Researchers should also note that destruere appears in a conjunctive prohibition alongside capiatur (to be taken or seized). The two terms work together to cover both the threshold act of detention and the ultimate act of legal destruction. Parsing which deprivation a given source is addressing — seizure or destruction — matters for understanding what procedural protection is being claimed.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal historical source for this entry. Burrill correctly anchors the term in Magna Carta Chapter 29 and cites Coke's Second Institutes at page 48 for the authoritative construction. Coke's reading — that destroyed means forejudged of life or limb, disherited, or put to torture or death — and his further statement that any oppression against law by color of usurped authority is "a kind of destruction" are both drawn from 2 Inst. 48, a real and accessible primary source.
Burrill does not elaborate further, which is appropriate for a term whose legal content lives almost entirely in the Magna Carta clause and Coke's commentary on it. Historical dictionaries generally treat destruere as a pass-through to the Coke gloss rather than as an independently developed legal concept. Researchers should go directly to 2 Institutes 48 for the substantive analysis; Burrill's entry is a pointer, not a substitute.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Latin term from old English law, destruere has no living independent jurisdictional variation. Its significance is historical and constitutional. American legal argument drawing on Magna Carta Chapter 29 absorbed the Coke construction through the common law tradition, giving the expanded meaning of destruere an indirect influence on early American due process discourse.