Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning to grieve, aggrieve, injure, or oppress. It appears in legal instruments and statutes as a verb describing the act of wronging or burdening a party — causing them harm, oppression, or legal injury. The past participle form, gravati, carries the meaning of those who have been aggrieved.
Why It Matters in Research
Gravare is a term of art belonging almost exclusively to medieval and early modern English legal Latin. Researchers encounter it primarily in statutory texts and pleading records from the period before Latin was displaced from English legal practice. Its primary appearance in the Law Mind corpus is likely to be in connection with the Statute of Westminster II (1285), where the term appears in chapters addressing remedies for those wronged or oppressed — making it a navigational marker for the expansion of common law remedies in that era.
The key research trap is treating gravare as a synonym for the modern tort concept of injury without accounting for its broader, more procedural character. In the medieval context, to be gravati was often the threshold condition for invoking a statutory remedy — the aggrievement was a jurisdictional trigger, not merely a description of harm. Researchers tracing the historical roots of the concept of aggrievement (including standing doctrines that require a party to be "aggrieved" before seeking judicial relief) may find gravare a useful anchor point, though the doctrinal chain from this Latin usage to modern standing doctrine is long and requires careful handling.
Because the term is non-recurring in modern legal usage, it will rarely appear outside of historical source materials, Latin maxims collections, and annotated editions of medieval statutes. If you encounter gravare in a primary source, it is almost certainly a document predating the 1730 Act that formally abolished Latin in English legal proceedings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Bouvier are in close agreement here, which itself reflects the narrow scope of the term. Burrill adds the most useful navigational detail, identifying Statute of Westminster II, chapters 36 and 37, as the specific textual context for gravare and gravati. Bouvier essentially restates Burrill without independent elaboration, citing him directly — a reminder that Bouvier frequently deferred to Burrill on Latin procedural terms of this vintage.
Neither dictionary attempts to connect gravare to downstream doctrinal development, and neither addresses how the concept of being gravati functioned procedurally within the writs and remedies of the period. For that analysis, researchers should look beyond these dictionaries to primary editions of the Statute of Westminster II and to secondary scholarship on the development of the action on the case, which emerged partly as a remedy for parties who could demonstrate they had been gravati but had no existing writ to cover their situation.
Both sources are silent on any civilian or canon law usage of the term, and no broader comparative treatment is offered. The term's life in the Law Mind corpus is effectively coextensive with its appearance in this narrow statutory context.
Jurisdictional Note
Gravare is a term of English legal Latin with no recognized independent reception in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions as a term of art. American legal sources that use the concept of "aggrievement" as a procedural threshold do so through English rather than direct derivation from this Latin form.