Definition
To hold a plea of anything. In Roman-derived legal Latin, justitium facere denotes the act of conducting or maintaining a legal proceeding — literally, to "make justice" or to hold court on a matter. The phrase is a compact expression for the exercise of judicial authority over a cause: to receive, hear, and adjudicate a plea or claim.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of deep historical and ecclesiastical legal practice with almost no presence in modern Anglo-American litigation. Researchers will encounter it primarily in medieval and early modern English legal texts, canon law materials, and Romanist treatises rather than in case reports or statutory collections.
The phrase is taxonomically close to related Latin maxims governing jurisdictional competence — who may hold court, on what subject matter, and under what grant of authority. A researcher who encounters justitium facere in a source is likely reading a document concerned with the scope of a court's power, the validity of proceedings, or the legitimacy of a judicial officer's authority. Context matters: in some usages the phrase affirms that proper proceedings were held; in others it appears in arguments contesting whether a tribunal had lawful authority to hold a plea at all.
Because the phrase carries jurisdictional weight, it is most likely to surface alongside related Latin formulas touching on the limits of inferior courts, franchise courts, and ecclesiastical tribunals. Researchers working in the history of English courts — particularly before the consolidation of the common law courts in the nineteenth century — should treat it as a signal term pointing toward questions of delegated judicial authority.
The historical dictionaries treat this entry with unusual brevity even by Latin maxim standards. Rapalje and Lawrence run the definition immediately into neighboring entries (JUSTLY DUE, JUSTLY MEASURE, JUSTS, JUSTITIA), which creates transcription and disambiguation hazards in any digitized or reprinted version of that source. Researchers using reprints or OCR-rendered text of Rapalje should verify that material attributed to justitium facere has not bled in from the surrounding entries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's and Rapalje and Lawrence define the term identically and minimally: "to hold a plea of anything." Neither source elaborates on the Roman law origins or traces the phrase through English judicial practice. Black's treatment is characteristic of its handling of Latin maxims — sufficient for identification but not for contextual application.
Rapalje and Lawrence present a particular editorial hazard here. The entry is typographically crowded and runs without clear paragraph breaks into definitions for JUSTLY DUE, JUSTLY MEASURE, JUSTS (jousting exercises distinguished from tournaments under 24 Hen. VIII c. 13), and JUSTITIA (justice; a jurisdiction or office). The juxtaposition of justitium facere with justitia is conceptually coherent — both derive from the Latin root for justice and judicial function — but the physical layout of the Rapalje text risks conflation. Nothing in either historical source addresses how the phrase functioned in practice, how frequently it appeared in pleadings, or whether its meaning shifted between Roman law usage and English common law adoption.
The historical dictionaries collectively miss the phrase's jurisdictional dimension. Defining it solely as "to hold a plea" strips away the implication of lawful authority that the phrase carries in its natural legal context. Researchers should supplement these sources with treatises on the history of English courts and with works on the reception of Roman and canon law in England.
Jurisdictional Note
Justitium facere is a term of historical legal Latin and does not function as an operative term of art in any contemporary common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is confined to historical and comparative legal research. Civil law jurisdictions with a continuous Romanist tradition may preserve closer conceptual analogs, but the precise phrase is not standard modern usage in those systems either.