Definition
The act of robbing; a depredation or plundering. Latrocination denotes the taking of another's property by force or theft, historically encompassing conduct ranging from outright highway robbery to systematic pillaging. The term appears primarily in older common law and civil law texts as a formal designation for robbery or brigandage as a category of criminal offense.
Common Confusion
Latrocination should not be confused with larceny, though both describe the wrongful taking of property. Larceny, which survives as an active legal term, is distinguished by the absence of force or violence. Latrocination historically implied a more aggressive or predatory act — closer to robbery — and carried connotations of repeated or organized plunder. Researchers encountering either term in historical sources should not assume equivalence.
Why It Matters in Research
Latrocination is effectively a dead term in modern Anglo-American law and will not appear in contemporary statutes, jury instructions, or case law. Its relevance is almost exclusively archival. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century common law materials, ecclesiastical records, or texts translated from Latin or civil law sources may encounter it as a descriptor for conduct that modern law would classify as robbery, extortion, or organized theft.
The term's Latin roots made it particularly common in civil law jurisdictions and in early English treatises drawing on Roman sources. Researchers comparing common law and civil law traditions on property crimes should be alert to the possibility that latrocination in a civil law source may carry a somewhat broader or narrower meaning than its apparent English equivalent, depending on the era and jurisdiction of the source.
Because the historical dictionaries define the term tersely and without elaboration, there is limited secondary guidance on how courts or treatise writers drew the precise boundaries of the concept. Researchers should treat the term as a contextual marker — its presence signals that the surrounding text is engaging with older, often Roman-inflected, criminal law vocabulary — rather than as a term with a settled technical definition they can rely on.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries converge on a minimal, nearly identical definition: the act of robbing; a depredation. Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is marginally more explicit in leading with "the act of robbing" before adding "a depredation," while the first edition and Rapalje & Lawrence reverse the emphasis or treat the terms as equivalents. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry appears to contain a transcription artifact in the available source text, but the substantive content aligns with the other entries.
None of the historical dictionaries trace the term's usage in reported cases, distinguish it from cognate terms, or provide any doctrinal elaboration. This is itself informative: the absence of case-law support in sources as comprehensive as Black's suggests the term was already receding from active legal use by the time those dictionaries were compiled. It was likely retained as a civil law or historical reference term rather than as living doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Latrocination has no meaningful presence in modern American or English statutory law. It is more likely to appear in sources from civil law jurisdictions or in historical legal scholarship drawing on Roman law. Researchers in Scottish, French, or Spanish colonial legal history may encounter it more frequently than those working in the English common law tradition.