Definition
ITE is a Latin abbreviation used in legal pleading and procedure, derived from the imperative form of the Latin verb *ire* (to go) and appearing in procedural formulas and record entries. In legal contexts, the term appears primarily in two distinct senses:
1. As a record-keeping or pleading notation, ITE (sometimes rendered *item*) signals the introduction of a new, separate matter, charge, or allegation — equivalent to "likewise" or "also." It marks the beginning of a distinct count, article, or specification within a larger pleading or presentment.
2. In older common law procedure, ITE appears in formulaic phrases connected with the direction or dismissal of juries and the formal progress of trial, including the well-known phrase *ite, missa est* (go, it is dismissed), adapted in legal record-keeping to mark the formal conclusion of a proceeding or the discharge of a jury.
The term is encountered almost exclusively in historical legal records, Latin pleadings, and older English and American common law practice. It has no operative modern legal meaning in American or English statutory law.
Common Language
Wiktionary (modern common usage): Initialism of "in the ear" — used in audiology and consumer electronics to describe devices worn inside the ear canal (e.g., ITE hearing aids).
The gap between the modern common usage and the legal meaning is complete. In contemporary general usage, ITE is a product-category abbreviation with no legal content. Researchers encountering ITE in legal records should treat it as a Latin legal notation, not an acronym.
Common Confusion
ITE is sometimes confused with *item*, its close Latin relative, which performs the same enumerating function in pleadings and records. The distinction is largely formal: *item* is the more common and more fully rendered form; ITE as a standalone abbreviation appears chiefly in condensed record entries and formulaic pleading contexts. Neither carries independent substantive legal weight — both are structural markers, not terms of legal art conveying rights or obligations.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical common law pleadings, ecclesiastical records, criminal presentments, or colonial-era American court records will encounter ITE as an enumerating device. Its significance is navigational, not substantive: it signals that a new, legally distinct allegation or charge follows. Miscounting or misreading ITE entries can cause a researcher to conflate separate counts or miss the structural architecture of a multi-count indictment or bill.
In Burrill's treatment, the surrounding context concerns the formation of legal issues — the process by which pleadings narrow the dispute to a single affirmative and negative for trial. ITE in that environment marks discrete steps or items within that process. Understanding this prevents misreading a multi-item pleading as a single unified allegation.
Because ITE has no modern procedural analog in plain-English filings, it drops out of legal usage entirely after the abolition of Latin pleading requirements. In American federal practice, that shift accelerated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Any source post-dating the jurisdiction's abolition of Latin pleading that uses ITE is likely quoting or transcribing from an older record.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not provide a standalone entry for ITE as an independent term of art. The fragment preserved in the source material situates ITE within the broader doctrine of *issue* in common law pleading — the formal joinder of opposing parties on a single disputed point, described by Coke (*Co. Litt.* 126a) as "an affirmative on one side and a negative on the other." In that framework, ITE functions as procedural scaffolding: it separates and enumerates the discrete elements being presented for resolution.
Burrill's treatment of issue itself is consistent with other historical dictionaries of the period, all of which trace the doctrine to Coke and describe issue as the product of alternating affirmative and negative pleadings. What historical sources do not address is ITE as an abbreviation worth explaining in its own right — it was evidently too familiar to require definition for the practitioners those dictionaries served. That familiarity is itself a research trap: modern researchers lack the assumed background knowledge that made the abbreviation self-evident to nineteenth-century lawyers.
Jurisdictional Note
ITE as a pleading marker was a feature of common law jurisdictions that retained Latin pleading forms — primarily England and the American states before procedural reform. Civil law jurisdictions and modern code-pleading states have no equivalent usage. Researchers in Louisiana or other civil law-influenced jurisdictions should not expect to encounter ITE in the same structural role.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry addresses Latin pleading forms or the history of issue formation directly. For related procedural and remedial contexts in which historical pleading structures may bear on modern doctrine, see:
— The Exclusive Remedy Doctrine and Its Exceptions (The Law Mind Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia, employment_109)
— After-Acquired Evidence and Its Effect on Remedies (The Law Mind Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia, employment_122)
These entries are tangential; neither addresses ITE or Latin pleading. Researchers whose interest is the history of common law pleading should consult the encyclopedia's procedural law and civil procedure materials directly.