Definition
A Latin term of medieval legal origin meaning, in its fullest sense: (1) to forfeit property or an estate as a consequence of criminal or illegal conduct; (2) to confiscate; and (3) to act outside or beyond the law — that is, to transgress, violate, or offend against law or custom. The term carries a dual character: it describes both the wrongful act itself (doing something beyond what the law permits) and the legal consequence flowing from that act (forfeiture of property or rights).
The canonical Latin formulation appearing in Coke on Littleton — forisfacere, i.e., extra legem seu consuetudinem facere — translates as "to act outside of law or custom." This etymology is essential to understanding the term's scope: forisfacere is not merely a technical forfeiture word but a broader concept of legal transgression, from which forfeiture was understood to follow as a natural result.
Common Confusion
Forisfacere (the verb) is closely related to forisfactura or forfactura (the noun), meaning the forfeiture itself or the thing forfeited. Historical sources use these forms interchangeably in ways that can obscure whether the writer is describing the act, the legal status, or the property subject to forfeiture. When reading medieval Latin legal texts or early modern English digests, distinguish carefully between the verbal form (the transgression or forfeiting act) and the nominal form (the forfeiture as an event or the forfeited property itself).
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in older common law sources and in scholarship on feudal tenure, medieval criminal law, and early forfeiture doctrine. Researchers will encounter it most frequently in:
— Treatises and year books dealing with feudal forfeiture of land, where a tenant's felony or treason caused the estate to "forisfacere" — to be forfeited to the lord or the Crown.
— Early English statutes and their commentaries, particularly those concerning attainder, escheat, and corruption of blood, where the concept of acting "outside the law" underpinned the forfeiture mechanism.
— Glossaries and digests of Latin maxims, where it appears as a term of art alongside forisfactura (the noun form, meaning forfeiture or the thing forfeited).
The primary research trap is treating forisfacere as a synonym for simple forfeiture. The term's verb form encompasses the wrongful act as well as its consequence. A source using forisfacere may be describing the transgression, the forfeiture, or the conceptual link between the two — context is required to determine which.
Researchers working on the history of American forfeiture law should note that this Latin root, while rarely appearing in post-colonial American legal materials directly, underlies the doctrinal architecture that U.S. courts inherited. The Latin terminology was largely translated out of American practice by the early nineteenth century, but the conceptual framework persisted.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in substantial agreement on the core meaning. All three track forisfacere to Coke on Littleton 59, treating Coke's gloss — extra legem seu consuetudinem facere — as the authoritative exposition. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence each identify the same two registers of meaning: (1) forfeiture of property on account of wrongdoing, and (2) the act of transgressing law or custom itself.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the phrase "to injure another," which is a useful expansion: it captures the private-law dimension of the term, in which forisfacere could describe a civil wrong or injury, not only a public offense. Neither edition of Black's foregrounds this private dimension as clearly.
None of the historical dictionaries substantially develops the feudal tenure context in which the term did most of its work in medieval sources — readers consulting only these dictionaries would not appreciate that forisfacere was the operative concept behind a vassal's forfeiture of land to a lord upon commission of a felony. Du Cange's Glossarium and Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum, both cited by Black's, are the appropriate sources for that fuller historical treatment.
Jurisdictional Note
Forisfacere is a term of English common law origin with no independent American statutory history. Its relevance in U.S. legal research is historical and doctrinal rather than operative. Researchers in civil law or Scottish legal history should note that cognate concepts exist but under different terminology; forisfacere as such is an English common law term.