EMPRIMECHIEF - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

EMPRIMECHIEFAuthored

The Law Mind • 636 words

Definition

An Anglo-French (Law French) term meaning "first of all" or "in the first place." Used in early common law pleading and legal writing as a transitional or ordinal phrase to introduce the first of several points, grounds, or matters. The term functions as a formal marker of sequence — the equivalent of "firstly" or "first and foremost" in a structured legal argument or pleading.

Common Confusion

EMPRIMECHIEF and EMPHYTEUSIS are entirely distinct. Burrill's printed entry conflates them, but they have no legal relationship. EMPHYTEUSIS is a civil law doctrine — a species of long-term or perpetual lease imposing obligations of improvement on the lessee — with substantial treatment in Roman law, canon law, and Scots law. EMPRIMECHIEF is a Law French ordinal phrase with no civil law connection. Researchers encountering the Burrill entry should treat the EMPHYTEUSIS content as a separate entry that begins mid-column and follow up EMPHYTEUSIS independently.

Why It Matters in Research

EMPRIMECHIEF is a navigational hazard in historical legal sources. It appears in Law French pleading texts and early common law records where structured enumeration of grounds or defenses was formalized through such ordinal phrases. Researchers working in Year Books, early plea rolls, or treatises on common law pleading may encounter EMPRIMECHIEF as an organizational signal rather than a substantive legal term — it marks structure, not doctrine.

The chief research trap is that Burrill's entry is incomplete and corrupt: the text as printed conflates EMPRIMECHIEF with EMPHYTEUSIS, an entirely unrelated civil law doctrine concerning long-term improving leases. This appears to be a printer's error or column-break confusion in the original edition. A researcher following Burrill's entry expecting civil law content will be misled. The two terms share no legal relationship.

Because EMPRIMECHIEF carries no independent substantive legal content, it will not appear as a headword in modern legal dictionaries and will rarely surface outside of Law French glossaries or treatises on historical pleading practice. Its significance is paleographic and philological rather than doctrinal.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical source in the Law Mind corpus offering this term, and the entry is unreliable as printed. The text breaks mid-definition and pivots without explanation into a treatment of EMPHYTEUSIS — a Greco-Latin civil law term governing perpetual or long-term leases of land for improvement. The two entries appear to have been run together through a typesetting error, leaving the EMPRIMECHIEF entry without a complete or usable definition.

No other historical legal dictionaries in the standard shelf — not Bouvier, not Black's early editions, not Jacob's Law Dictionary — carry EMPRIMECHIEF as a separate headword, which is consistent with its character as a functional Law French phrase rather than a term of art requiring independent doctrinal treatment. Tomlin's Law Dictionary and Cowell's Interpreter, which are more attentive to Law French vocabulary, would be the appropriate supplementary sources for researchers needing fuller philological treatment.

The partial Burrill entry should not be cited as authority for any substantive proposition. It is useful only as confirmation that the phrase existed in the Law French lexicon known to nineteenth-century common law scholars.

Jurisdictional Note

EMPRIMECHIEF is a historical term of English common law pleading practice. It has no modern jurisdictional application in any common law system and does not appear in civil law traditions. Its appearance in historical sources is essentially confined to English Year Books and early pleading manuals.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

No single Law Mind Encyclopedia entry corresponds directly to EMPRIMECHIEF. Researchers may find relevant context under entries treating Law French vocabulary, common law pleading practice, or the history of the Year Books.

EMPRIMECHIEFmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Fr. First of EMPHYTEUSIS, Emphyteosis, Emphiteosis. Græco-Lat. [from Gr. ippurebois, from upureve, to plant, or improve land.] In the civil law. An improving lease; a contract (of the class termed consensual,) by which houses or lands are given to be pos-Loan; a thing lent at the request of the sessed for ever, (perpetuo fruenda tradunborrower. White's New Recop. b. 2, tur,) or, at least, for a long time, upon contit. 11, c. 1. dition that the land shall be improved, and that a small yearly rent or pension, (pen-wards. sio sive redditus,) shall be paid to the proprietor. Inst. 3. 25. 3. Cooper's Notes, in loc. Hallifax, Anal. b. 2, ch 18, num. 9. See Cod. 4. 66. It is distinguished both from the contract of sale, and the contract of hiring, and rests on its own peL. Fr. Imculiar covenants. Inst. ub. sup. Inst. ub. sup. Calv. prisonment. Emprisonement pur emprisoneLex. It resembles the fee farm and copy-ment; imprisonment for imprisonment. hold estates of the English law. See EmBritt. c. 25. phyteuta. The right granted by such a contract, (jus emphyteuticum, or emphyteuticarium). The real right by which a person is entitled to enjoy another's estate as if it were his own, and to dispose of its substance, as far as can be done without deteriorating it. 1 Mackeld. Civ. Law, 357, § 324.-An inheritable and transferable real right, which is granted by the proprietor of an estate to another, in consideration of a certain and invariable rent to be paid at the time agreed upon. Id. 359, Kaufmann's note. all. Kelham.