Definition
Latin. "In consideration or contemplation of law." A maxim phrase used to describe something that exists or is held not in physical or practical reality, but by operation of legal principle — that is, in abeyance. The law treats a thing as existing, vesting, or occurring at a particular moment because legal logic requires it, even when no tangible act has taken place.
The phrase captures a fundamental mechanism of common law reasoning: the law will impute, presume, or hold in suspense certain rights, titles, or interests when no other party has a present, definite claim to them. The concept is most closely associated with the doctrine of abeyance — the state in which a freehold title, for example, is said to rest when there is no person in whom it can immediately vest.
Common Confusion
In consideratione legis should not be confused with in consideratione præmissis (in consideration of the premises), which appears as the next entry in several of these dictionaries and refers to recital-based consideration in deeds and contracts. The two phrases share Latin structure and adjacent placement in historical dictionaries, creating a real risk of conflation when browsing. They address entirely different legal concepts: the former concerns legal imputation and abeyance; the latter concerns the formal basis for contractual obligation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter this phrase almost exclusively in older English and American common law materials dealing with real property, particularly the vesting of freehold estates and the status of title during gaps in succession. The phrase signals that a court or treatise writer is invoking legal fiction rather than empirical fact — the law is doing work that no human actor has performed.
The primary research trap is conflating in consideratione legis with the broader concept of constructive notice or constructive possession, which involve different legal fictions. This phrase is specifically tied to the in-abeyance doctrine and to situations where the law holds something in suspension, not to situations where the law imputes knowledge or control to a person.
In the Law Mind corpus, the phrase appears most frequently as a bridge term: it connects the passage from one legal state to another when no intermediate act of transfer or vesting has occurred. When you see it, look for the surrounding doctrinal context — is the writer discussing title to land between the death of a tenant and the entry of an heir? An office between incumbents? A chose in action before assignment? The phrase does identical work in each of these contexts but the downstream doctrine differs significantly.
Because the phrase appears truncated in multiple historical dictionaries (each entry breaking off mid-sentence into IN CONSIDERATIONE PRÆMISSIS), researchers using those sources should be aware that the full original passages from which these definitions were drawn contain more context. The repeated truncation across Black's (both editions), Burrill's, and Bouvier's suggests a common ancestor text or a shared typographic artifact — a useful caution about the limits of dictionary authority for this term.
The Dyer citation (Dyer 102b, Lord Berkeley's Case) is the consistent anchor across all four dictionaries and is the appropriate primary source for researchers who need to trace the phrase to its common law roots.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Burrill's, and Bouvier's — give virtually identical definitions: "in consideration or contemplation of law; in abeyance." There is no meaningful divergence among them. Each cites Dyer 102b (with minor variation in citation format), confirming a shared source and a stable, uncontested meaning across the historical lexicographic tradition.
Burrill's is the only entry that identifies the specific case name — Lord Berkeley's Case — which gives researchers the clearest anchor to the primary authority. Black's 1st edition cites "Dyer, 1026," which appears to be a page or folio reference variant rather than a separate authority.
What the historical dictionaries do not do is explain the doctrine of abeyance in any depth, or distinguish the range of contexts in which in consideratione legis applies. They treat the phrase as a stable unit of meaning requiring only brief glossing. For the underlying doctrine, researchers must go beyond the dictionary shelf to treatises on real property and estates.