Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "in the case provided" or "in a case provided for." Used in legal pleading and drafting to signal that a provision, remedy, or rule applies specifically because a governing instrument — typically a statute — has expressly addressed the situation at hand. The fuller form, in tali casu editum et provisum ("in such case made and provided"), was the standard pleading recital confirming that the relief sought or the action taken fell within a case explicitly anticipated and covered by law.
Common Language
This is pure legal Latin with no counterpart in ordinary modern English and no entry in general usage dictionaries. The phrase is technical pleading vocabulary and carries no meaning outside a legal context. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted accordingly.
Common Confusion
In casu proviso is closely related to, and sometimes treated as interchangeable with, casu proviso — the shortened form appearing independently in older pleading texts and dictionaries. Burrill directs the reader from in casu proviso back to casu proviso as the primary entry, suggesting that the two were used interchangeably in practice. Researchers encountering either form in historical documents should treat them as functionally equivalent. Neither should be confused with ex provisione legis ("by provision of law"), which speaks to legal authority in a broader structural sense rather than to the specific case-coverage function of in casu proviso.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a creature of historical common law pleading. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in pre-twentieth-century pleading records, writs, declarations, and statutory instruments drafted in the formal pleading style that persisted in English and American courts through the nineteenth century.
The phrase functioned as a ritualized recital in pleadings — particularly in actions on statutes — confirming that the pleader was proceeding under a case the statute had specifically contemplated. Its presence signals that the cause of action was statutory rather than grounded purely in common law. When reading historical declarations or informations, encountering in casu proviso (or its fuller form in tali casu editum et provisum) is a reliable marker that a statute is the operative source of right or liability.
Researchers should be alert to the abbreviated variant casu proviso in indexes, abridgments, and digests, where space constraints often shortened the phrase. The two forms index to the same doctrine. Digital full-text searching across historical corpus materials should account for both variants as well as the English gloss "in such case made and provided," which appears frequently in printed statutes and pleading forms where the Latin was translated but not always replaced.
By the late nineteenth century, code pleading reforms largely eliminated ritualized Latin recitals of this type from American practice. The phrase will rarely appear in twentieth-century sources. Its research value is therefore concentrated in: (1) English Chancery and common law pleading records; (2) early American state and federal pleading from the colonial period through roughly the 1850s–1870s; and (3) treatise literature on common law pleading, particularly works addressing actions on statutes.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement. All four render the core definition as "in a (or the) case provided" and supply the fuller Latin equivalent in tali casu editum et provisum alongside an English gloss. The citation to Townshend's Pleading (pages 164–165) appears in Black's (both editions) and Burrill; Bouvier cites "Touch. Pt. 164, 165," which is likely a reference to Touchstone or a variant attribution. The slight bibliographic discrepancy across sources does not affect the substantive definition but is worth noting for researchers attempting to locate the underlying treatise authority.
Burrill adds the most navigational value by explicitly cross-referencing casu proviso as the primary entry, confirming the relationship between the two forms. None of the four sources provides extended doctrinal analysis; all treat the term as a pleading formula requiring identification rather than explanation. This is consistent with its function: in casu proviso was a recital of conformity to statute, not itself a term of substantive legal art.
The historical dictionaries are silent on the decline of the phrase, its displacement by code pleading, or its continued relevance (if any) in English practice after the Judicature Acts. Researchers should not assume continuity of usage into the twentieth century based on these entries alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase belongs to the common law pleading tradition shared by England and its former colonies. It was in active use in American courts that retained common law pleading forms, and survives in early state and federal records accordingly. Its use was effectively ended in American jurisdictions by the adoption of the Field Code (New York, 1848) and successor code pleading reforms, though the transition varied by state.