Definition
Latin (Law Latin): "From the assignment" or "by the assignment." A phrase appearing in older common law pleading and practice to indicate that a claim, action, or right is brought on the basis of, or by authority of, an assignment — that is, a transfer of interest or right from one party to another. Where a party prosecuted an action not in their own original right but as the recipient of a transferred right or interest, the action or pleading could be described as proceeding ex assignatione, signaling the derivative nature of the claim.
The phrase functions descriptively rather than substantively: it identifies the legal basis on which the plaintiff stands, alerting the court and opposing party that the right being asserted was not originally the plaintiff's but came to them through formal transfer.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a relic phrase of the medieval and early modern common law, found almost exclusively in original writs, register entries, and formal pleadings from the period when Latin remained the language of English legal process. Researchers will encounter it chiefly in the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Register of Writs) and in treatises and digests that reproduce or gloss writ forms from that tradition.
The practical trap for corpus researchers: ex assignatione describes a procedural or pleading posture, not a substantive doctrine. It tells you how the claim is framed, not what the underlying right is. A writ or pleading using this phrase must be read alongside the substantive action — debt, covenant, or otherwise — to understand what right was being enforced. The phrase alone carries no independent doctrinal weight.
Because assignment as a legal concept evolved significantly between the medieval period and modern law — particularly with respect to which rights were and were not assignable at common law versus in equity — the presence of ex assignatione in a historical source may also signal jurisdictional or doctrinal complexity about assignability that the document itself does not resolve. Choses in action, for example, were historically not assignable at common law, making any writ framed ex assignatione in that context worth scrutiny.
Researchers working in equity, commercial law, or property history who encounter this phrase should treat it as a pointer toward questions of assignability doctrine rather than as a settled assertion that the assignment was valid or effective.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only identified historical dictionary treatment, and it is minimal: "From, or on the assignment," with a single citation to the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig.) at folio 75b. This is consistent with the phrase's narrow technical function — it was a writ formula, not a term requiring elaborate doctrinal explanation. The brevity of Burrill's entry reflects that the phrase was understood by contemporaries as self-explanatory shorthand within a formal Latin pleading tradition rather than as a term of contested meaning.
No divergence among sources is present because only one source treats the term. What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any discussion of how the underlying doctrine of assignment changed over time, making the phrase less meaningful in later practice as assignment rules evolved and Latin pleading was abolished.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase belongs to the English common law writ tradition and its American colonial and early reception-period inheritance. It has no continuing currency in modern American or English practice following the abolition of Latin pleading. Researchers focused on civil law or Scottish legal sources will not encounter it.