JUS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

JUSAuthored

The Law Mind • 1105 words

Definition

A Latin term drawn from Roman law with two distinct but related meanings that appear throughout legal texts, treatises, and historical documents:

1. Law in the abstract. Jus denotes law as a general concept, system, or science — the underlying body of legal principle as distinguished from any particular statute or enactment. In this sense, jus is law as a living intellectual framework, not a specific rule. Roman jurists used jus to describe the whole legal order: the accumulated principles, customs, and doctrines that gave coherence to the legal system.

2. A right. Jus also means a specific, recognized legal entitlement belonging to a person — a right that the law acknowledges and will enforce. In this sense, it is the building block of much of civil law vocabulary, appearing in compound terms to identify particular categories of rights (jus ad rem, jus in re, jus gentium, jus sanguinis, and dozens more).

The dual meaning is not accidental. In Roman legal thinking, the concepts were linked: a right (meaning 2) was understood as a claim grounded in law (meaning 1). The tension between these two senses runs through centuries of jurisprudence.

Common Confusion

Jus is frequently confused with lex. The distinction is fundamental in Roman and civil law sources: lex refers to a specific enacted law, statute, or rule — a concrete legislative expression. Jus is the broader principle or body of law from which lex draws authority and to which it contributes. When historical sources speak of jus civile or jus naturale, they are invoking a legal system or body of doctrine, not a particular enactment. Conflating the two terms when reading Roman law materials or early common law treatises is a reliable source of misreading.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Jus almost never appears alone in legal usage. Its significance is almost entirely carried by compound forms, a partial list of which follows:

Jus ad rem — a right to a thing not yet in possession; a right to demand possession.
Jus civile — civil law; the law of a particular state or city, as distinguished from universal law.
Jus gentium — the law of nations; principles of law held to apply across peoples.
Jus naturale — natural law; the law derived from reason and nature rather than human enactment.
Jus in re — a full property right in a thing, including possession.
Jus sanguinis — right of blood; citizenship or nationality derived from parentage.
Jus soli — right of soil; citizenship derived from place of birth.
Jus tertii — the right of a third party; raised as a defense by a possessor against an owner's claim.
Jus disponendi — the right to dispose of property.
Jus accrescendi — the right of survivorship.

Each compound term carries its own doctrinal weight. Researchers should treat each as a distinct entry rather than assuming that knowledge of one transfers automatically to another.

Why It Matters in Research

Jus is a gateway term in the Law Mind corpus. It does not function as an isolated concept but as the root of an extensive terminological tree. Several research traps deserve attention.

First, historical sources — including Black's first and second editions — present jus primarily through its Roman law context. Researchers working on common law materials from the medieval and early modern periods will encounter jus in a different register: less as a systematic philosophical category and more as a term of art in pleading, conveyancing, and property law. The same word carried different operational weight depending on whether the author was a civilian, a common lawyer, or a natural law theorist.

Second, the compound forms are the real research targets. Encountering jus alone in a historical document usually signals that the full compound form has been abbreviated or that the author is using it in a broad philosophical sense. When a specific legal question turns on the meaning of a right or entitlement, the relevant compound term will govern.

Third, jus sanguinis and jus soli have substantial ongoing significance in nationality and immigration law and appear in modern constitutional and statutory contexts entirely removed from their Roman origins. Researchers moving between historical and modern sources on citizenship will need to track the term across very different documentary traditions.

Fourth, jus tertii appears with some frequency in property and possessory actions and has a distinct procedural meaning that diverges from the general sense of jus as right or law. It warrants separate attention when reading cases involving competing claims to possession.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary in both the first and second editions addresses jus with reasonable consistency, presenting the two-meaning structure (law in the abstract; a right) and noting its Roman law origins. Both editions treat jus as a term understood by reference to its compounds rather than as a freestanding entry of independent doctrinal content.

Burrill's Law Dictionary and Anderson's Dictionary of Law provide less direct coverage of jus as a standalone term; their entries relevant to the headword appear in the context of adjacent terms (jurisdiction, jury) rather than in substantive treatment of jus itself. This is instructive: by the period those dictionaries were compiled, jus as a bare term had largely receded into the background of compound forms and philosophical discourse. Practitioners encountering it in operative legal documents would almost always encounter it in compound.

Rapalje & Lawrence similarly offers no direct, substantive entry on jus in the material provided, reflecting the term's status as a building block rather than a working legal category in common law practice.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the term's significant role in natural law jurisprudence and constitutional theory, where jus naturale and jus gentium were live categories in debates over the foundations of English and American law into the nineteenth century. Researchers working on early American constitutional thought will find the term embedded in political and legal argument well beyond its Roman law pedigree.

Jurisdictional Note

Jus and its compounds carry the most operational legal weight in civil law jurisdictions and in international law. In common law jurisdictions, the term survives chiefly in property law vocabulary, natural law discourse, and conflict of laws. Jus sanguinis and jus soli remain active terms in nationality law across both civil and common law systems.

JUSmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

Lat. In Roman law. Right; jus- tice; law; the whole body of law; also a right. The term is used in two meanings: 1. "Jus" means "law," considered in the abstract; that is, as distinguished from any specific enactment, the science or department of learning, or quasi personified factor in

JUSmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

which, in an order determined by the hazard of its revolutions, are drawn a sufficient number of such names to make up the panels for a given term of court. Lat. In Roman law. Right; justice; law; the whole body of law; also a right. The term is used in two meanings: 1. “Jus’”? means “law,” considered in the abstract; that is, as distinguished from any specitic enactment, the science or department of learning, or quusi personified factor in human history or conduct or social development, which we call, in a general sense, ‘‘the law.” Or it means the law taken as a system, an aggregate, a whole; “the sum total of a number of individual laws taken together.” Or it may designate some one particular system or body of particular laws; as in the phrases “jus civile,” “jus gentium,” “jus pretorium.” 2. In a second sense, “jus” signifies “a right;” that is, a power, privilege, faculty, or demand inherent in one person and incident upon another; or a capacity residing in one person of controlling, with the assent and assistance of the state, the actions of another. This is its meaning in the expressions “jus in rem,” “jus accrescendi,” “jus possessionis.” It is thus seen to possess the same ambiguity as the words “droit,” “recht,” and “right,” (which see.) Within the meaning of the maxim that “‘tgnorantia juris non excusat”’ (ignorance of the Jaw is no excuse), the word ‘jus’? is used to denote the general law or ordinary law of the land, and not a private right. Churchill v. Bradlev, 58 Vt. 403, 35 Ati. 189, 56 Am. Rep. 563; Cooper v. Fibbs, L. R. 2 H. L. 149; Freichnecht v. Meyer, 39 N. J. Eq. 561. The continental jurists seek to avoid this ambiguity in the use of the word “jus,” by calling its former signification “objective,” and the latter meaning “subjective.” Thus Mackeldey (Rom. Law, § 2) says: “The laws of the first kind [compulsory or positive laws] form law [jus] in fts objective sense, [jus est norma agendi, law is a rule of conduct.] The possibility resulting from law in this sense to do or require another to do is law in its subjective sense, [jus est facujtas agendi, law is a license to act.) The voluntary action of man in conformity with the precepts of law is called ‘justice,’ [fustitia.]” Some further meanings of the word are: An action. Bract. fol. 3. Or, rather, those proceedings in the Roman action which were conducted before the preetor. Power or authority. Sui juris, in one’s own power; independent. Inst. 1, 8, pr.; Bract. fol. 3. Alieni juris, under another’s power. Inst. 1, 8, pr. - The profession (ars) or practice of the law. ‘us ponitur pro ipsa arte. Bract. fol. 2b. A court or judicial tribunal, (locus in quo redditur jus.) Id. fol. 3. For various compound and descriptive terins, see the following titles: FIDUCIARIUM. In the civil law. A right..in trust; as distinguished from jus legitimum, a legal right. 2 Bl. Comm. 328.

JUSmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

(704) 3. Wit of inquiry-Elegit.-Juries are also summoned in actions for other purposes than that of trial. Thus, a writ of inquiry (q. v.) requires a jury, as does the execution of a writ of elegit (q. v.) 24. In English County Court actions, a jury consists of five persons (Poll. C. С. Pr. 104); and in justices' courts and other local courts of limited jurisdiction, in America, a jury of six members is common. 25. As to other kinds of juries in civil matters, see COURT LEET; EXTENT; HOMAGE; INQUEST OF OFFICE; INQUISITION; JUS PATRONATUS; LUNACY. In criminal procedure, the following kinds of jury exist: jury is now abolished, (Naturalization Act, 1870, § 5; it still exists in a few of the States,) but it is said that where an indictment is found against a scholar or other person having the privilege of the University of Oxford, he is entitled to be tried in the University Court by a jury de medietate, half of freeholders, and half of matriculated persons. 4 Steph. Com. 327. 10. Jury of matrons. Where, in a criminal prosecution, a female prisoner alleges herself or appears to be pregnant, a jury of twelve matrons may be impanelled to try whether she is so or not. They choose one of their number to be forematron. Archb. Cr. Pl. 187. See REPRIEVE JUROR'S BOOK.-A list of persons qualified to serve on juries. JURY.-See JUROR. JURY, (defined). 67 III. 172; 11 Nev. 39; 3 Bl. Com. 357. (what constitutes). 6 Blackf. (Ind.) 461; 8 Id. 561; 4 Ind. 501; 16 Id. 496; 3 Cush. (Mass.) 58; 14 Minn. 439; 2 Park. (N. Y.) Cr. 312; 3 Wis. 219. (in State constitution). 12 N. Y. 190; 4 Ohio St. 167. (right of trial by). 2 Pet. (U. S.) 525 : 3 Id. 446; 7 Id. 552; 1 Mass. 454; 7 Id. 275; Coxe (N. J.) 158; 18 Barb. (N. Y.) 451; 62 Id. 16; 2 Cow. (N. Y.) 815, 816; 3 Id. 706; 37 How. (N. Y.) Pr. 140; 41 Id. 86. (705) and prætor (Liv. iii. 55); and under the empire the term "judex" often designated the "præses." -Smith Dict. Antiq. JUS ACCRESCENDI.-That right of survivorship which is peculiar to joint owner ship, joint rights, and joint liabilities. See (706) Claudius, from the materials to which he had access. It was a popularization of the laws. JUS CORONE: - The right of the crown. JUS CURIALITATIS ANGLIÆ.- The curtesy of England. See CURTESY. (707)

JUsnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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plural of JU

jusnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

The juices given off as meat is cooked. | A lightly-reduced gravy or stock made from this.

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