Definition
A Latin phrase meaning, literally, "journey by attorney." In historical English practice, ITINERE PER ATTORNATUM referred to a procedural privilege allowing a party to appear before a traveling royal court — particularly the justices in eyre — through an attorney rather than in person. The eyre was a periodic circuit court through which royal justices visited the counties of England, and attendance before it was compulsory for parties with matters pending. This writ or privilege permitted the substitution of an attorney to answer in place of the party who would otherwise be required to make the journey in person.
The term appears in the historical sources primarily by cross-reference to the writ CLAMIA ADMITTENDA IN ITINERE PER ATTORNATUM (also spelled CLAMEA ADMITTENDA), which was the fuller procedural vehicle. That writ directed the justices in eyre to admit a claim or appearance made through an attorney on behalf of an absent party, relieving the party of the obligation of personal attendance on the circuit.
Common Confusion
ITINERE PER ATTORNATUM is sometimes loosely read as a general statement about attorney appearance, but it was specifically tied to the eyre circuit system. It does not bear on the general development of the right to appear by attorney in common law courts, which followed a distinct and longer procedural history. The two concepts share vocabulary but not substance.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will almost never encounter ITINERE PER ATTORNATUM standing alone in historical records or pleadings. It functions as a fragment of a longer Latin formula, and all three major historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus treat it as a redirect to CLAMIA ADMITTENDA (or CLAMEA ADMITTENDA). Any research touching this term must begin at that entry, not here.
The spelling variation between CLAMIA and CLAMEA across the dictionaries is not a substantive distinction — it reflects the inconsistent Latinization common in medieval English legal records and the copyist traditions that carried into early printed law dictionaries. Researchers searching historical plea rolls, writs registers, or Year Books should account for both spellings, and potentially for further manuscript variations.
The broader context — the eyre system — was abolished in England by the mid-fourteenth century, meaning this term and the writ it describes belong entirely to medieval common law practice. It will appear in sources covering the period roughly from Henry II through Edward III, and almost nowhere after. Corpus researchers encountering this phrase in later sources should treat it as either antiquarian citation or deliberate archaism in a formal legal argument.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three Law Mind source dictionaries are uniform in treatment and nearly identical in execution: all three define ITINERE PER ATTORNATUM solely by cross-reference, directing the reader to the CLAMIA/CLAMEA ADMITTENDA entry. Black's first edition and Rapalje & Lawrence use the CLAMIA spelling; Black's second edition uses CLAMEA. None of the dictionaries provides substantive independent analysis at this entry. This unanimity is itself informative — it confirms that even by the late nineteenth century, when these dictionaries were compiled, the term was recognized as a phrase fragment rather than an autonomous legal concept, meaningful only as part of the fuller writ formula.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural mechanics of the eyre itself, the conditions under which the writ would be sought, or the relationship between this privilege and the developing law of attorney representation more broadly. Researchers needing that context must look to treatises on medieval English legal procedure — Maitland's work on the eyre and Bracton's De Legibus are the foundational sources — rather than to the dictionary shelf.