Definition
A Latin maxim meaning "in the easy case" or "easily determinable." Used in legal writing and argument to characterize a matter, question, or proposition as one that is straightforward, free from difficulty, or readily resolved without extended analysis. When a writer describes something as *in facili*, the implication is that the point at issue requires no elaborate proof or extended reasoning — it is, by its nature, obvious or plain.
The phrase functions less as a term of art with discrete legal consequences than as a rhetorical or analytical marker. Writers invoke it to distinguish simple cases from those requiring deeper examination, or to signal that a particular question, once properly framed, answers itself.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter *in facili* most often in older treatises, commentaries, and digests written in the tradition of civil law scholarship, where Latin glosses and qualifications were woven into analytical prose. It appears in contexts where an author is sorting questions into tiers of difficulty — contrasting the easy case (*in facili*) with the hard or doubtful case (*in dubio* or *in difficili*).
The primary research trap is treating the phrase as a standalone legal rule or doctrine. It is not. It is a characterization applied to a legal question, and its significance lies in what it signals about the writer's analytical framework. When Burrill's source, Calvinus's *Lexicon Juridicum* (a foundational Latin legal vocabulary compiled in the early seventeenth century), uses the phrase, it reflects a broader civil-law habit of distinguishing clear cases from contested ones — a distinction that shapes how subsequent authorities may treat a proposition as settled.
When working in early common law sources that draw on civil law learning — equity treatises, admiralty materials, ecclesiastical law commentaries — *in facili* may appear where a modern writer would say "clearly" or "it is plain that." Recognizing the phrase prevents misreading a rhetorical signal as a legal standard.
Cross-corpus note: Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus who encounter this phrase should trace it forward through civil law commentary and backward to its Calvinus source context. The phrase is unlikely to appear in purely domestic common law materials after the mid-nineteenth century; its presence is itself a signal about the intellectual tradition of the text.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's *Law Dictionary* supplies the only direct lexical entry among the shelf sources, and it is economical: "Easily; easy of determination or explanation," citing Calvinus's *Lexicon Juridicum*. This is accurate and sufficient as a gloss, but it understates the phrase's rhetorical function in actual usage. Knowing that something is *in facili* is not merely a comment on its difficulty — it is often a dismissal of objection, a way of closing analysis rather than opening it.
No other historical dictionary in the shelf sources carries this entry, which reflects the phrase's status as learned Latin shorthand rather than a term with independent doctrinal content. Researchers should not expect extended treatment of it in English-language common law dictionaries of any period.
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