FIERI - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FIERIAuthored

The Law Mind • 661 words

Definition

A Latin term meaning "to be made" or "to be done." In legal usage, fieri appears almost exclusively as a component of compound terms and Latin maxims rather than as a standalone legal concept. Its primary legal significance lies in two contexts: (1) as the root of the phrase in fieri, meaning something in the process of being made or not yet completed; and (2) as part of the writ fieri facias (often abbreviated fi. fa.), a common-law writ directing a sheriff to levy on a judgment debtor's property. The term also appears in the maxim fieri non debet, sed factum valet — "it ought not to be done, but if done, it is valid" — applied in practice where an act performed without proper authority nevertheless takes legal effect once completed.

Common Confusion

Fieri is frequently encountered in historical legal texts as a fragment of longer Latin phrases and is sometimes misread as an independent legal term with its own doctrinal content. It is not. Researchers encountering fieri in isolation should treat it as a signal to locate the full phrase or writ to which it belongs. The most important compounds are in fieri and fieri facias, which carry distinct and substantive meanings.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter fieri almost always as part of a longer Latin formula. The practical entry points are the compound terms, particularly fieri facias and in fieri. Historical materials — pleadings, writs, court records, and treatises from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries — use these Latin forms extensively, and understanding fieri as the shared root helps decode unfamiliar compound expressions when they appear without gloss.

The maxim fieri non debet, sed factum valet has particular research value. Courts applied it to validate procedurally irregular acts — the doctrine that an act wrongly done may still be legally effective when completed. Burrill cites New York reports and Shepherd's Touchstone as loci for this principle, and it surfaces in equity and common law contexts alike. Researchers tracing doctrines around voidable versus void acts should check for this maxim before assuming that any irregularity rendered an act nullity.

Rapalje & Lawrence's entry under this headword is misdirected — the dictionary jumps to fides rather than supplying a substantive entry for fieri itself. This is worth noting for corpus researchers relying on Rapalje as a reference: the source contains at least one alphabetical sorting or editorial gap here, and fieri should not be treated as absent simply because Rapalje does not engage with it directly.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries are in uniform agreement on the bare translation: "to be made; to be done." Black's (both editions) and Burrill define fieri identically and immediately redirect the reader to in fieri. Anderson adds the cross-reference to facere (to do, to make), situating fieri within the broader family of Latin action-verbs used in common-law pleading and writ practice. None of the historical sources treat fieri as a standalone doctrine; all treat it as infrastructure — grammatical and formulaic — for the compound terms that do the doctrinal work.

Burrill provides the most substance of the historical sources by reproducing the maxim fieri non debet, sed factum valet with citations to Coke's Reports, Shepherd's Touchstone, and early American reporters, giving the researcher a chain from English common law authority through early nineteenth-century New York practice.

What the historical dictionaries do not supply: any account of how fieri facias evolved in equity practice, or how American jurisdictions modified or replaced the writ through statutory garnishment and execution procedures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Researchers should not rely on these entries alone for the procedural history of execution writs.

FIERImain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

L. To be done; to be made. paper, as received into custody, and give it Compare FACERE. 1 Crisfield v. State, &c., 55 Md. 194 (1880), Robinson, J. 2 Re West of England Bank, Exp. Dale, 11 Ch. D. 778 (1879), Fry, J.; Connecticut Mut. Ins. Co. v. Central Nat. Bank, 104 U. S. 68 (1881). Stoll v. King, 8 How. Pr. 299 (1853), cases; Frost v. M'Carger, 14 id. 137 (1857); Sutton v. De Camp, 4 Abb. Pr. 484 (1868); 1 Code R. 86, 87; 5 Duer, 86. R. S. § 5117. * Chapman v. Forsyth, 2 How. 208 (1844); Hennequin v. Clews, 111 U. S. 681 (1884); Woodward v. Towne, 127 Mass. 42 (1879), cases; 104 id. 248; 15 Gray, 547-49; 16 Conn. 223; 77 N. Y. 427; 13 Rep. 468; 9 Bened. 495-97, cases; 5 Biss. 324. • Robins v. Hope, 57 Cal. 497 (1881): 1 Story, Eq. § 218. As to fiduciary depositors in banks, see Naltner v. Dolan, 108 Ind. 500 (1886): 26 Am. Law Reg. 29-30 (1887), cases. * State v. McMinn, 81 N. C. 587 (1879); Commonwealth v. Josselyn, 97 Mass. 412 (1867). • Simons v. Lovell, 7 Heisk. 510 (1872). Sargent v. Ludlow, 42 Vt. 729 (1870). its place among other papers, - to file away. Files. Collections of papers, orderly arranged; also, papers under official custody. On file. Kept in an orderly collection; in its proper place. Filing a paper consists in placing it in the proper official custody, by the party charged with this duty, and the making of the proper indorsement by the officer.4 A paper is filed when delivered to the proper officer, and by him received, to be kept on file. 1 State v. Gladden, 73 N. C. 155 (1875); Tate v. State, 46 Ga. 148 (1872). 2 L. filum, a thread. 3 [Gorham v. Summers, 25 Minn. 86 (1878); 27 id. 18, 23; 16 Ohio St. 548; 14 Tex. 339. 4 Phillips v. Beene, 38 Ala. 251 (1862). 5 Peterson v. Taylor, 15 Ga. 484 (1854); Powers v. State, 87 Ind. 148 (1882); Amy v. Shelby County, 1 Flip. 104 (1872); 6 Ind. 309; 2 Blackf. 247; 2. Iowa, 91: 29 id.