Definition
Et non allocatur (Latin: "and it is not allowed") is a formal Latin phrase used in early English legal proceedings to record the court's rejection of a pleading, motion, argument, or claimed allowance. The phrase appears as a notation in the record — particularly in the Year Books and early common law reports — to indicate that the court refused to accept or give effect to something submitted by a party. It is the negative counterpart to allocatur ("it is allowed"), which recorded judicial approval of a matter.
In practice, et non allocatur functioned as a brief formal pronouncement or endorsement on motions or bills, signaling that the court found the submission legally insufficient, procedurally improper, or otherwise unacceptable. It belongs to a family of Latin record-keeping formulas that once governed the formal vocabulary of English pleading and court administration.
___
Common Confusion
Et non allocatur is sometimes loosely grouped with other Latin refusal formulas such as non allocatur or non concessit. These are related but technically distinct. Non allocatur is the stripped-down form ("it is not allowed"), while et non allocatur functions as a connective notation within a larger record entry — the "et" (and) signals that the rejection follows upon something previously recorded. Researchers should not treat the two phrases as interchangeable when transcribing or analyzing historical records.
___
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is essentially a dead letter in modern practice — you will not encounter it in contemporary courts — but it appears with some regularity in Year Book materials, early English case reports, and colonial American legal records. Researchers working with pre-nineteenth-century English common law sources need to recognize it as a court notation rather than a substantive legal holding.
The critical navigational point: et non allocatur tells you what happened procedurally but not why. When you encounter it in a Year Book or early report, it marks the fact of rejection, not the reasoning. To understand the grounds of refusal, you must read the surrounding text. The phrase is a shorthand annotation, not an opinion.
Researchers tracing the history of the allocatur family of formulas should note the inverse relationship between et non allocatur and allocatur. The latter had a longer life in certain procedural contexts — particularly in fee taxation and bail proceedings — and appears in American sources well into the nineteenth century. Et non allocatur, by contrast, dropped out of use earlier and is largely confined to the oldest English sources.
The Burrill citation to "Yearb. M. 2 Edw." (Year Book, Michaelmas Term, 2 Edward) places the phrase squarely within the medieval Year Book tradition, confirming its antiquity. When working with Year Book materials, be aware that Latin notations of this kind were often standardized formulas copied across terms and reigns, and their appearance in a record does not necessarily indicate anything unusual about the particular proceeding.
___
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the shelf sources, defining the phrase simply as "And it is not allowed" with a single citation to the Year Books. This brevity is consistent with how historical dictionaries treated Latin record formulas — they were treated as self-explanatory translations rather than terms requiring doctrinal elaboration.
Burrill's citation to the Year Books is the important content here. It anchors the phrase firmly in the medieval English common law record tradition and signals that its primary significance is historical and paleographic rather than substantive. No modern legal dictionary carries the term, which is itself informative: the phrase has not migrated into any living area of practice.
What the historical sources do not address is the procedural mechanism that triggered the notation — whether it followed oral argument, written submission, or a ministerial review. That context must be reconstructed from the surrounding Year Book text rather than from dictionary entries.
___