Definition
In Roman and civil law, *dissimulatio* is the deliberate overlooking or passing over of a wrong by the injured party — a form of implied forgiveness or tacit reconcilement that operates to extinguish the legal injury. The term captures the act of a person who, knowing of the wrong done to them, chooses not to pursue it and thereby signals a waiver or condonation. The effect in law is that the injury is treated as extinguished: the party who has passed over the wrong loses the standing or right to press it as a legal grievance.
The maxim associated with this concept is: *Dissimulatione tollitur injuria* — an injury is extinguished by the forgiveness or reconcilement of the party injured.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To dissimulate means to conceal one's true feelings, motives, or character; to disguise or hide the truth. A dissimulator is someone who pretends or feigns.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To dissimulate is to conceal under a false appearance; to disguise or mask. The word carried a connotation of deliberate concealment, even deceit.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is significant. In ordinary English, *dissimulatio* and its English cognate *dissimulate* carry a negative charge — concealment, feigning, even duplicity. In the legal sense drawn from Roman law and civil law tradition, the term is neutral to positive: it describes a knowing, voluntary overlooking of a wrong that has the remedial effect of extinguishing the injury. The injured party is not hiding anything; they are consciously forgiving or passing over the offense. A researcher encountering this term in a civilian or Scots law source should resist the common-language instinct to read deception into it.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Dissimulatio* is a term of Roman and civilian jurisprudence that does not have a direct common-law equivalent, though it maps conceptually onto doctrines of condonation, waiver, and release. Researchers working in Scots law, civil law jurisdictions, or comparative private law will encounter this term in contexts involving defamation, personal injury, and the law of delict, where the conduct of the injured party after learning of the wrong could defeat a claim.
The Erskine citation in Burrill — *Erskine's Institute of the Law of Scotland*, Book 4, Title 4 — places this term squarely in the Scots law tradition of delict. Researchers using Erskine or other institutional writers of Scots law (Stair, Bankton, Bell) should be attentive to *dissimulatio* as a defense or bar to action, not as an element of the wrong itself. It belongs to the law of remedies and the conduct of the pursuer, not to the constitution of the delict.
Do not confuse *dissimulatio* with doctrines of fraudulent concealment or misrepresentation, where the word's ordinary-language meaning might suggest a connection. In civilian sources, *dissimulatio* is about the victim's conduct, not the wrongdoer's.
Researchers working in historical American or English equity sources are unlikely to encounter *dissimulatio* by name, but the underlying concept — that a party who knowingly overlooks a wrong may lose the right to complain of it — appears under headings such as condonation (in matrimonial law), waiver, and acquiescence. Cross-reading between these common-law equivalents and the civilian *dissimulatio* tradition can be productive in comparative projects.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill defines it as simply "a passing over" and anchors its legal force in the maxim *Dissimulatione tollitur injuria*, citing Erskine's *Institutes* for the proposition that an injury is extinguished by the forgiveness or reconcilement of the injured party.
The entry is brief but accurate. Burrill does not develop the doctrine, nor does he connect it to cognate common-law concepts — a limitation characteristic of his approach to Latin civilian terms, which he tends to define and illustrate by maxim rather than by doctrinal analysis. Researchers should not expect Burrill to distinguish, for example, between *dissimulatio* as active forgiveness and *dissimulatio* as mere inaction or delay; those distinctions, which matter in civilian doctrine, require resort to the institutional writers themselves.
No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus addresses this term, making Erskine's *Institutes* the primary substantive source for researchers who need more than the definitional minimum.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Dissimulatio* as a doctrine with formal legal force is characteristic of Scots law and civil law jurisdictions with a Roman law foundation. It does not appear as a named doctrine in English common law or in American jurisdictions, though functionally equivalent principles exist under different names.
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