Definition
A Latin term meaning "the back." In legal usage, dorsum appears almost exclusively in the phrase *in dorso recordi* — "on the back of the record" — referring to matter written, endorsed, or noted on the reverse side of a legal document or court record. The term carries no independent substantive legal meaning; it functions as a locator or positional descriptor within formal Latin pleading and record-keeping conventions.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The back or dorsal region of an animal; the back of the tongue; the top of the foot or back of the hand; a ridge on a hill or planetary surface.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The ridge of a hill; the back or dorsal region of an animal; the upper side of an appendage or part.
The common meaning of dorsum is anatomical or geographical — the back of a creature or the ridge of terrain. The legal meaning is narrower and archival: it refers not to anatomy but to the physical reverse side of a document. A researcher encountering dorsum in a legal source should read it as shorthand for document location, not as any reference to persons, animals, or landscape.
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Why It Matters in Research
Dorsum is encountered almost exclusively in Latin legal maxims and the record-keeping conventions of English common law courts, particularly in materials from the medieval through early modern periods. Its practical significance lies in the phrase *in dorso recordi*, which indicates that a procedural notation, endorsement, continuance, or judicial memorandum was placed on the back of a record rather than its face. In historical practice, the back of a roll or document was a standard location for returns, endorsements, and supplemental entries — information that could easily be overlooked if a researcher reviews only the recto (front) of archival materials.
Researchers working in Law Mind corpus sources that reproduce writs, plea rolls, or common law records should be alert to the possibility that substantively important material — a sheriff's return, an endorsement of service, a continuance notation — may be referenced as existing *in dorso* and may require examination of the document's reverse. Transcriptions and calendars of historical records sometimes omit or separately catalog dorsal matter; what is described as "on the back of the record" in a treatise may not appear in a printed edition that reproduces only the face of the document.
The term has no modern procedural life in American law. It belongs to the Latin vocabulary of the common law inherited from English practice, and its appearance in a source is itself a dating signal — it suggests pre-modern or early treatise material. Black's Law Dictionary retained it through its second edition largely for historical completeness.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in complete agreement. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's all define dorsum as "the back" and provide the same illustrative phrase, *in dorso recordi* ("on the back of the record"), with citation to 5 Coke's Reports. The minor variation in citation form — 5 Coke 44b versus 5 Coke 44D — reflects transcription variance across editions rather than any substantive difference.
Burrill is marginally more precise in his citation (44 b, indicating a verso page reference in the reports), which is consistent with the term's function: the "b" page designation in Coke's Reports itself signals a verso or back page, making the citation almost self-illustrative of the concept. None of the dictionaries elaborate beyond the phrase and citation, which is appropriate — the term is narrow and its entire legal utility is contained in that single usage.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the archival and procedural significance of dorsal entries in practice: why matter was placed on the back of records, what categories of information typically appeared there, and how courts and copyists treated such entries. Researchers needing that context should look to works on common law pleading and English record-keeping practice rather than to dictionary sources.
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