Definition
Latin: "according to the tenor following." A formal phrase used in older legal pleadings and instruments to signal that the exact words of a referenced document were about to be reproduced verbatim in the text that followed. When a pleader or drafter needed to incorporate the precise language of another writing — a statute, deed, writ, or judgment — rather than merely paraphrase or summarize it, the phrase juxta tenorem sequentem served as the formal marker introducing that verbatim transcription.
The phrase functioned as a technical signal of exactness: the reader was put on notice that what followed was not an approximation or abstract but a true copy of the original tenor.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English common law pleading records, reports, and formularies. Researchers encountering the phrase in original sources, Year Books, or early printed reports should understand it as a structural cue: whatever immediately follows is being offered as a verbatim recitation, carrying the same legal weight as the document itself. In disputes over the sufficiency of a pleading or the accuracy of a recital, the presence of juxta tenorem sequentem was significant — it represented a pleader's formal assertion of textual precision, not mere substance.
The phrase is largely absent from American legal writing. Researchers working in early colonial or post-revolutionary American records may encounter it in documents that self-consciously modeled English common law forms, but it does not appear to have been adopted as standard American pleading practice. Its absence from American sources should not be read as a difference in substantive law — the underlying practice of verbatim recital survived under different conventions.
Because this is a phrase rather than a doctrine, it leaves almost no footprint in secondary literature or treatise indexes. Researchers are unlikely to find it through subject-matter searches; it surfaces primarily in the body of historical reports and pleading records when transcribing instruments. Familiarity with the phrase prevents misreading a passage — a researcher unfamiliar with the term might otherwise mistake the following quoted text for original authorship rather than embedded recitation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary to define this term, and its treatment is brief: "According to the tenor following. A phrase used in the old books when the very words themselves referred to were set forth." Black's cites to Salkeld's Reports (2 Salk. 417) and Lord Raymond's Reports (1 Ld. Raym. 415), both early eighteenth-century English reporters, confirming that the phrase was recognized and in active use in that period. No substantive elaboration appears in Black's beyond this identification and attribution.
Other historical dictionaries in the law library tradition do not appear to give the phrase independent treatment, consistent with its nature as a formal pleading tag rather than a term of substantive legal art. The historical record is therefore thin but clear: the phrase was a recognized technical marker in English common law pleading, documented in the reports, and its meaning was uncontested.