Definition
Et habuit (Latin: "and he had it") is a short formulaic phrase found throughout the English Year Books, used by reporters to record that a party's application or demand was granted by the court. It functions as a term of judicial allowance — a compact signal that the court permitted whatever was being sought, whether a procedural request, a writ, a view of land, or some other demand. The phrase does not describe the outcome of the underlying dispute; it records only that a specific request in the course of litigation was approved.
Common Confusion
Et habuit should not be confused with phrases recording a final judgment or verdict in favor of a party. It records judicial allowance of a specific procedural or interlocutory demand — not the resolution of the case. A party might receive et habuit on a demand for a view of land and still ultimately lose the action.
Why It Matters in Research
Et habuit is navigational vocabulary for Year Book research. Encountering it in a Year Book entry signals that the immediately preceding demand or application was successful — a finding with significance when reconstructing early common law procedure. Researchers tracing the development of procedural rights (such as the right to a view before pleading in real actions) will find et habuit used as the shorthand confirmation that the court recognized and honored those rights in practice.
The phrase appears without elaboration precisely because Year Book reporters assumed readers already understood its import. A researcher unfamiliar with it might read past a critical procedural moment in a case. The example preserved across all three source dictionaries — "Parn. demanda la view. Et habuit" — illustrates this: the party demanded a view of the land at issue, and the court granted it. That single phrase, et habuit, carries the entire ruling on the request.
Because et habuit appears in Law French and Latin mixed-register Year Book text, researchers should be alert to variant spellings (the Second Edition of Black's records the typographical variant "et habutit") and to the possibility that a copyist or early printer rendered the phrase inconsistently across manuscript traditions.
For corpus researchers, the term is a marker of successful procedural applications rather than final judgments. Do not conflate a grant recorded by et habuit with a final verdict or judgment for the party.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill are in complete agreement on definition, function, and illustrative example. All three trace the phrase to the Year Books and cite the same source: Michaelmas Term, 6 Edward III, folio 49 (M. 6 Edw. III. 49). The consistency reflects the phrase's narrow and stable meaning — there was simply nothing to dispute.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the broader procedural context in which et habuit operated: which types of demands were routinely granted and recorded this way, how frequently the phrase appears across the Year Book corpus, or whether any parallel phrase recorded denial of a demand. Researchers wanting that context will need to move beyond dictionary sources into Year Book scholarship and diplomatic study of early common law pleading records.