Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "therefore here." Used in argumentation in early English common law pleading and reported cases to assert that a legal conclusion already established in one context applies equally to the matter at hand — that is, "the rule holds there, therefore it holds here." The companion phrase ERGO NEC HIC ("therefore neither here") inverts the logic, asserting that a negative principle demonstrated elsewhere equally defeats the present claim.
Both phrases function as connective argumentative shorthand in Year Book discourse, where advocates and judges reasoned analogically from prior cases or hypotheticals to the dispute before the court.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter ERGO HIC and ERGO NEC HIC almost exclusively in Year Book materials and early abridgments. These phrases are not terms of art with doctrinal content of their own — they are rhetorical markers signaling the structure of an analogical argument. Recognizing them prevents misreading: a passage containing ERGO HIC is not announcing a distinct legal rule but is concluding an analogical chain of reasoning.
The practical significance for corpus research is navigational. When these phrases appear, the researcher should look backward in the text to locate the predicate proposition — the rule or precedent being imported — rather than treating the phrase itself as the substance. The argument's weight lies in what precedes ERGO, not in the phrase itself.
Because both phrases are confined to an era of French- and Latin-mixed Year Book reporting, they do not migrate into later equity or common law treatise literature in any substantive way. A researcher working in post-Tudor materials is unlikely to encounter either phrase outside of a deliberate archaism or a quotation from early authority.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary treatment of note, and it is appropriately spare: "therefore here; words used in argument in old cases," with a citation to Year Book Pasch. 10 Edward III, folio 35. Burrill adds the companion phrase ERGO NEC HIC in the same entry, correctly treating them as a logical pair. No other major historical law dictionaries — not Bouvier, not Black's early editions — appear to have carried independent entries for this phrase, which reflects its narrow currency as a feature of Year Book argot rather than a term with ongoing doctrinal life.
The Year Book citation Burrill provides (10 Edw. III) places the usage firmly in the reign of Edward III, mid-fourteenth century, consistent with the Latin-inflected argumentative style characteristic of that period's reported pleadings.
No historical dictionary source attributes any substantive legal doctrine to the phrase itself, and none should. The phrase is a logical connector, not a rule.