Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "and it is allowed." In legal practice, *et allocatur* was a formal notation entered by a court clerk or officer to signify that a particular matter — most commonly a bill of costs, a writ, or an exception — had been examined and approved. The phrase functioned as an official stamp of judicial or clerical sanction, confirming that the item in question met the procedural or substantive requirements for allowance.
The term appeared most frequently in two contexts:
1. **Bills of costs.** When a party sought taxation of costs after judgment, the taxing officer or master would review the submitted bill and, upon approving it, enter *et allocatur* to indicate the costs had been formally allowed. This notation carried legal effect — it transformed a claimed figure into an officially recognized obligation.
2. **Writs and exceptions.** In older common law practice, certain writs or exceptions required judicial allowance before they could issue or be acted upon. The clerk's entry of *et allocatur* signaled that the court had reviewed and sanctioned the proceeding.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a procedural artifact of the older common law and equity courts, and researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century records, pleading books, and cost schedules. It has no active operational role in modern American or English practice — the formal notation has been absorbed into routine orders and docket entries that serve the same function without the Latin.
The key research trap is treating *et allocatur* as a substantive legal ruling. It is not. It is a ministerial or quasi-judicial act of allowance, not a merits decision. A bill of costs bearing *et allocatur* has been approved procedurally; it tells you nothing about how the underlying dispute was resolved.
Researchers working in equity records should note that the term appears alongside similar Latin notations — *fiat*, *let it be*, and various allocatur forms — that collectively track the lifecycle of a proceeding through chancery or common law chambers. Understanding which officer made the notation (clerk, master, taxing officer, judge) matters for understanding its weight.
For cost taxation research specifically: the presence of *et allocatur* on a historical cost bill is confirmation that the bill survived scrutiny and represents the court's final figure. Absence of the notation may mean the bill was never formally taxed, was rejected, or that records are incomplete.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary define the phrase identically and minimally: "And it is allowed." Neither edition expands on the procedural contexts in which the notation appeared, the officers authorized to enter it, or its relationship to analogous notations in equity versus common law practice. The brevity is typical for Latin maxims in these dictionaries, which catalog the phrase rather than analyze it.
What the historical dictionaries leave unaddressed is the practical significance of the notation within the workflow of older courts. Treatises on costs and pleading from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provide more useful operational context — particularly works addressing the office of master in chancery and the taxation of costs in common law courts, where *et allocatur* appears as a standard entry in specimen forms.
The phrase belongs to the broader family of Latin notations used to record judicial or quasi-judicial acts in shorthand, a convention that persisted in English and American courts well into the nineteenth century before modernizing procedural rules pushed Latin out of routine court records.
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