Definition
Jus cudendæ monetæ (also rendered jus cudendz monetæ in older typography) is a Latin phrase meaning "the right of coining money." In English legal history, it denoted the sovereign prerogative to mint currency — a power belonging exclusively to the Crown. As a royal prerogative, it encompassed not merely the physical act of coinage but the authority to determine the standard, weight, and denomination of lawful money within the realm.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early modern and medieval English legal sources. Researchers encountering it in historical materials should recognize it as a prerogative doctrine entry point, not a standalone legal rule with procedural content. Its significance in primary sources is usually framed around disputes over who held the right — Crown versus subject, or Crown versus chartered corporation — rather than around any technical elements of its exercise.
The spelling variant jus cudendz monetæ found in Black's 2nd Edition reflects a common ligature compression in older print typesetting, where the æ character was sometimes dropped or garbled in reproduction. Researchers searching digitized historical corpora should query both forms, as well as the abbreviated cudendæ alone, to capture the full range of occurrences.
The term connects directly to the broader body of royal prerogative law and to monetary sovereignty as a constitutional principle. In English constitutional history, the coinage power was treated as inseparable from sovereignty itself — its usurpation by a subject was historically considered a serious offense. The citation in Black's to 2 Howell's State Trials (118) places the term in the context of formal legal proceedings where prerogative rights were contested, which is the most productive documentary context for further research.
Researchers working on American materials will find this term absent from post-colonial domestic sources except as a historical reference, since coinage power in the United States passed to Congress under the Constitution rather than to any executive prerogative.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) offers a minimal but precise entry: "the right of coining money," attributed to old English law and citing 2 Howell's State Trials 118. The entry is definitionally complete for its purpose — this is a term of fixed, narrow meaning that did not require elaboration in a practitioner's dictionary of that era.
No substantial divergence exists among historical legal sources on the core meaning. The interest lies less in definitional dispute and more in the constitutional weight the concept carried. Historical dictionaries of this period routinely catalogued Latin prerogative maxims as a body, and jus cudendæ monetæ belongs to that tradition. What the historical dictionaries do not address — and what modern researchers must supply from other sources — is the procedural and statutory context in which challenges to coinage rights were litigated, or the transition of monetary sovereignty into statutory and eventually constitutional frameworks.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is a creature of English law and has no operative legal meaning in American, Commonwealth, or civil law jurisdictions except as a historical reference. In the United States, the coinage power is a constitutional grant to Congress (Art. I, § 8) and is not framed in prerogative terms.