Definition
A Latin maxim of medieval English law meaning, loosely, "one not to be chosen on an appointed day" or "not eligible on a fixed day." The phrase describes a person who, by virtue of their status or condition, is exempt from being selected or compelled to serve in a particular secular office or obligation on a day designated for such appointment. In practice, the maxim was closely associated with protections afforded to persons in holy orders — clergymen and others subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction — who could not lawfully be pressed into secular administrative roles such as bailiwicks or beadleships.
The principle operated as a shield: once a clergyman demonstrated his status, his selection was void from the outset, and he could seek a writ of relief compelling those who had imposed the office to desist.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears in the narrow but historically significant body of law governing the intersection of royal administration and ecclesiastical privilege in medieval and early modern England. Researchers working in this area should be aware of several navigational points.
First, the term is closely connected to the writ DO IN OFFICIUM — a writ directed to bailiffs or others who had thrust a bailiwick or beadleship upon a person in holy orders, commanding them to release him or desist from compelling him to discharge the office. Burrill cross-references the Registrum Brevium (Reg. Orig. 187b) as the source for this writ's form. Any researcher tracing the procedural history of clerical exemptions should consult the Registrum Brevium directly, as it is the primary repository for writ forms of this period.
Second, the maxim belongs to the broader doctrine of benefit of clergy and clerical immunity from secular compulsion — a doctrine with a complicated trajectory across English legal history. Do not assume that materials discussing clerical exemption in later periods (post-Reformation especially) will use this Latin formulation; the underlying privilege largely dissolved or transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the vocabulary shifted accordingly.
Third, the term is unlikely to appear in American legal sources. It is a creature of English ecclesiastical-administrative law with no direct transplant into colonial or federal legal traditions. Researchers in American law who encounter the phrase are almost certainly working with an English source or a treatise that imports English ecclesiastical doctrine.
Fourth, the spelling and Latin form of this term vary across historical sources. Scribal and typographical inconsistency in medieval and early modern legal Latin is common; search strategies should account for variant spellings of both "dies" and "constituto."
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary treats this term in the context of the related writ DO IN OFFICIUM, defining that writ as directed to bailiffs or others "who had thrust a bailiwick or beadleship upon one in holy orders, commanding them to release him, or to desist from their attempts to compel him to discharge the office," with citation to the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig. 187b).
Burrill does not provide a standalone discursive definition of the maxim itself, treating it primarily as a term of art embedded within the writ's functional description. This is typical of Burrill's method with Latin maxims that are procedurally embedded rather than doctrinally freestanding.
No entry for this precise phrase appears in Tomlin's Law Dictionary, Jacob's Law Dictionary, or Black's Law Dictionary (early editions), which reflects how specialized and narrowly applied the term was — it circulated within the literature of ecclesiastical law and writ practice rather than general legal reference. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry, anchored by the Registrum Brevium citation, as the most authoritative secondary source available on the English common law side. For deeper treatment, primary ecclesiastical court records and the Registrum itself are the appropriate next step.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is effectively confined to pre-modern English law. It has no recognized application in U.S., Canadian, or other common law jurisdictions outside England, and even in English law it is treated as a historical form with no modern operative force.
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