Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "according to the form of the statute." Used in common law pleading and criminal practice to indicate that an act was done, or an offense was committed, in the manner and form prescribed or prohibited by a particular statute. The phrase appears most frequently as a formal closing clause in indictments and informations, signifying that the conduct charged violated the relevant statutory provision in the precise terms required by law.
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Common Confusion
JUXTA FORMAM STATUTI is sometimes loosely treated as interchangeable with the English phrase "contrary to the form of the statute" — its functional pleading equivalent. They are not identical in form, though they serve the same purpose. The Latin phrase was the standard usage in earlier common law pleading; the English equivalent displaced it as courts moved toward vernacular pleading and as statutory pleading requirements simplified indictment forms. A researcher encountering one in a historical document should recognize both as performing the same function without assuming the presence of one implies the other.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely a creature of formal pleading practice and has virtually no independent life outside that context. Researchers working in historical criminal records, colonial court documents, or early American and English indictments will encounter it as boilerplate in the concluding clause of charging instruments. Its presence signals that the charge was grounded in statutory law rather than common law, which can be significant when tracing the history of a particular offense — especially in jurisdictions where both statutory and common law versions of an offense coexisted.
The phrase becomes a navigational tool when working backward through statutory history: if an indictment closes with *juxta formam statuti*, there is a specific statute to find. In early American practice, particularly colonial and post-Revolutionary records, this closing formula was carried over from English pleading practice and retained even as courts began permitting simplified indictment forms.
Researchers should also be alert to the fact that the phrase does not appear in modern indictments or charging instruments. Its absence from contemporary practice means that searching modern legal databases for this term will return only historical materials, law review treatments of pleading history, or dictionary and treatise references — not live case law applying the doctrine in a current context.
One procedural trap: in historical practice, omitting the *juxta formam statuti* clause from a statutory indictment could be grounds for a motion to quash or a plea in abatement. Courts varied on how strictly they enforced this formal requirement. A researcher analyzing historical indictments that were challenged or dismissed should check whether a defective or absent closing formula was the basis for the court's ruling.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary supplies a minimal but accurate entry: "according to the form of the statute." This is definitionally complete, but the brevity leaves the research context entirely undeveloped. Black's does not address the phrase's role in pleading practice, its displacement by English equivalents, or the consequences of its omission from an indictment — all of which mattered considerably in the periods when formal Latin pleading was standard.
No additional coverage appears in the shelf sources consulted. The gap is unsurprising: secondary legal dictionaries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tended to treat Latin maxims and pleading formulae briefly, relying on practitioners' familiarity with form books and pleading manuals for the operational detail. Researchers needing substantive guidance on how the phrase functioned in practice should consult historical pleading treatises rather than the dictionary literature.
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase originates in English common law pleading and was adopted broadly in American colonial and early republic practice. As American jurisdictions modernized their criminal procedure rules — particularly following the adoption of codes of criminal procedure in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — the requirement of Latin pleading formulae was abolished. The phrase is now a historical artifact across all U.S. jurisdictions and in modern English practice.
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