Definition
En fet is a Law French phrase meaning "in fact" or "in deed." It designates something that exists or has occurred as a matter of actual fact, as distinguished from what exists only in law, in contemplation, or in name. The phrase was used in early common law pleading and legal reasoning to contrast a real, physical, or accomplished state of affairs with a merely technical or constructive one.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the stratum of Law French that saturates Year Book sources and early common law records. Researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal materials will encounter en fet as part of a recurring conceptual pairing — fact versus law — that underlies much of the architecture of common law pleading. The distinction between what is "en fet" and what is "en ley" (in law) was not merely stylistic; it often governed which party bore the burden, what remedy was available, and how a court would characterize the nature of a possession, obligation, or wrong.
Because en fet appears in Year Book contexts rather than in later reported cases or statutory materials, it will not surface in post-seventeenth-century sources with any regularity. Researchers should not expect to find it in modern digests or treatises. Its presence is essentially a marker of archaic pleading discourse. When tracing the fact/law distinction in later materials, researchers should pivot to the anglicized equivalents — "in fact," "in deed," or "de facto" — all of which carry forward the same conceptual work.
The single Burrill citation to Year Book Michaelmas Term, 3 Edward II (approximately 1309–1310) confirms that the phrase was already in settled use in the earliest stratum of Year Book reporting. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should treat en fet as a gateway term pointing toward the broader vocabulary of Law French and toward the conceptual framework underlying de facto/de jure analysis in later common law development.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary support available for this term, rendering it a short entry: "L. Fr. In fact. Yearb. M. 3 Edw. II. 59." The entry is definitionally minimal but historically specific, grounding the term in early fourteenth-century Year Book usage. Burrill's citation practice here is typical of his treatment of Law French terms — he confirms meaning and points to a single illustrative authority without elaborating on doctrinal context.
No significant divergence among historical dictionaries is available to report given the single-source basis of this entry. What can be noted is that Burrill's framing — "in fact" — aligns precisely with the parallel Latin phrase "in facto esse" and the later anglicized "de facto," both of which served the same distinguishing function in more modern legal discourse. Researchers should consult Tomlin's, Jacob's, and Cowell's law dictionaries for related Law French terms of the same period, though en fet itself may not appear in all of them.