HAI - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

HAIAuthored

The Law Mind • 384 words

Definition

HAI is a variant spelling of the Latin interjection meaning "yes" or "indeed," appearing in some older legal texts and marginal notations. It is not a recognized legal term of art. The Burrill source material attributed to this entry is a digitization artifact: the term "HAI" does not appear in Burrill's Law Dictionary as a defined legal concept. The text fragment associated with it belongs to the entry for HÆRES FIDEICOMMISSARIUS (or adjacent Roman law headwords), where "hæsi-" is a truncated form of "hæsitabat" (he hesitated), appearing in a quotation from 6 Mod. 287. The fragment has been misindexed.

Researchers encountering "HAI" as an apparent Law Mind headword should treat it as a corpus indexing artifact and consult HÆRES FIDEICOMMISSARIUS directly.

Why It Matters in Research

Digitization and optical character recognition of historical legal dictionaries frequently fragment entries at page breaks or column boundaries, generating spurious headwords from mid-word text. "HAI" is a product of this process. The Burrill fragment containing "hæsi-tabat" was split across a column and the remnant misread as a standalone entry. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should be alert to similar artifacts, particularly with Latin and Law French terms that use diacritical characters (æ, œ, ç), which OCR systems routinely misread or truncate. When a headword yields a definition fragment that reads as mid-sentence, the researcher should look to the surrounding alphabetical range for the actual entry.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary does not define HAI. The source fragment belongs to the entry for HÆRES FIDEICOMMISSARIUS, a Roman civil law concept describing the person for whose benefit a testamentary trust (fideicommissum) was established. In that entry, Burrill quotes from 6 Mod. 287, reporting that a judge "hæsitabat" — hesitated — then recanted. The passage illustrates judicial uncertainty about the English analogue to the fideicommissarius concept, with Burrill noting its correspondence to the English trustee. No historical dictionary consulted for this project defines HAI as a legal term.

HAImain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

(7) other who was called fidei commissarius, J. recanted instanter, and Gould, J. hæsi- (q. v.) Inst. 2. 23. 1, 2. Corresponding tabat." 6 Mod. 287. nearly to the trustee of the English law. Crabb's Hist. Eng. Law, 391. HÆRES FIDEICOMMISSARIUS. Lat. In the civil law. The person for whose benefit an estate was given to another (termed hæres fiduciarius, q. v.) by will. Inst. 2. 23. 6, 7, 9. Answering nearly to the cestui que trust of the English law. Cooper's Just. Inst. Notes, ibid. Crabb's Hist. 391, note. HÆRES LEGITIMUS. Lat. A lawful heir. Cod. 6. 58. Hæres legitimus est quem nuptiæ demonstrant. He is a lawful heir whom marriage points out as such; who is born in wedlock. Co. Litt. 7 b. Bract. fol. 88. Fleta, lib. 6, c. 1. Broom's Ματ. [388.] HÆRES NATUS. Lat. In the civil law. An heir born; one born heir, as distinguished from one made heir, hæres factus, (q. v.) an heir at law, or by intestacy, (ab intestato;) the next of kin by blood, in