Definition
Latin: "outside the law" or "beyond the law." A term of medieval legal status denoting a person who has been placed outside the protection and benefits of the law — most commonly as a consequence of outlawry. A person declared extra legem had no legal standing to sue, could not invoke the courts' protection, and was in the eyes of the law as though dead. The maxim that typically accompanies the term states the principle precisely: Extra legem positus est civiliter mortuus — "He who is placed outside the law is civilly dead."
The phrase operates both as a descriptive status and as a doctrinal shorthand for the full deprivation of legal personality that followed an outlawry judgment.
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Common Confusion
Extra legem should not be confused with the broader concept of civil death as it survived into modern law. Civil death in contemporary usage typically refers to specific statutory disabilities — such as the loss of voting rights or contractual capacity — attached to felony conviction or long-term imprisonment. Extra legem, by contrast, described a total and formal expulsion from the legal order, leaving the outlaw without remedy, protection, or enforceable rights of any kind. The modern form is a partial disability; the historical form was categorical exclusion.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical artifact, relevant to research in medieval and early modern English law, Roman law influence on the common law, and the development of civil death doctrine.
Key research points:
First, extra legem appears most frequently in maxim collections and Latin law dictionaries. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should recognize it as a status term attached to an outlawry proceeding — not a general philosophical claim about being "above the law."
Second, the maxim Extra legem positus est civiliter mortuus is attributed to Coke's Institutes (Co. Litt. 130) in both Black's and Burrill's. Researchers tracing the maxim to its source should go to Coke on Littleton directly rather than relying on the dictionary paraphrase, as the broader context in Coke addresses the specific legal consequences that followed from outlawry in English practice.
Third, the concept connects to outlawry doctrine, which had procedural dimensions — a defendant who fled or failed to appear could be progressively declared an outlaw, at which point they lost standing in any English court. Understanding extra legem helps researchers interpret pleading records and year book entries where outlawry is pleaded as a bar to a plaintiff's action.
Fourth, in comparative or civilian law research, the concept has parallels in Roman law's capitis deminutio maxima, which likewise stripped a person of legal personality. Researchers working across common law and civil law traditions should be careful not to conflate these distinct doctrines, which arose from different procedural contexts.
Finally, the term will not appear in modern statutory or case law in its Latin form. A researcher finding it in a 19th-century treatise or opinion is almost certainly reading a historical reference or an argument grounded in maxim-based reasoning, not a live legal rule.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's and Burrill's provide functionally identical entries, defining extra legem as "out of the law; out of the protection of the law" and citing the same maxim with the same attribution to Co. Litt. 130. Neither dictionary elaborates on the procedural mechanism — outlawry — by which a person came to be placed extra legem, nor do they trace the evolution or eventual abolition of outlawry in English law. Outlawry was formally abolished in England by the Forfeiture Act 1870 and related legislation, a development neither historical dictionary contextualizes.
Burrill's adds the clarifying parenthetical "[outlawed]" after "one who is put out of the law," which is a useful editorial gloss — it anchors the abstract Latin phrase to its concrete procedural meaning. Black's omits this clarification, making Burrill's marginally more useful for a researcher encountering the term without prior context.
Neither source addresses the Roman law background or the relationship to civil death doctrine as it persisted in American jurisdictions through the 19th century. For those threads, researchers should look beyond the law dictionaries to historical treatises on outlawry and civil death.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Outlawry; Civil Death; Capitis Deminutio
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