Definition
Legem is a Latin accusative form of lex, meaning "law." It does not function as a standalone legal concept but appears as a grammatical component within several distinct Latin legal phrases used in historical English and Roman law. Each phrase carries its own substantive meaning:
1. Legem amittere — "To lose one's law." The forfeiture of a person's legal credibility, specifically the right to be admitted to take an oath in legal proceedings. This was a significant civil disability in early English law, as the capacity to swear an oath was prerequisite to participation in many legal procedures.
2. Legem facere — "To make law" or "to make oath." In old English law, the act of performing wager of law — swearing a formal oath, typically supported by compurgators (oath-helpers), to establish the truth of one's position in a dispute.
3. Legem ferre — "To bear or propose a law." In Roman law, the formal act of submitting a proposed law to the people for approval. The term reflects the Roman legislative process in which magistrates carried proposed legislation before popular assemblies.
Common Confusion
Legem is frequently encountered in close proximity to related Latin phrases — lex, lege, legis — all derived from the same root. Researchers should not treat these forms as interchangeable. Lex is the nominative (subject) form; legem is the accusative (object) form; legis is the genitive (possessive) form. The grammatical case signals the phrase's function and meaning. Conflating legem facere with lex facere, for instance, would be an error in reading historical texts. Additionally, legem facere (making oath through wager of law) should not be confused with legem ferre (proposing legislation) — the phrases operate in entirely different legal contexts and legal systems.
Why It Matters in Research
Legem entries appear with high frequency in medieval Year Books, early plea rolls, and ecclesiastical court records, where oath-based procedure was central to dispute resolution. Researchers working in these sources need to recognize the phrase-level meaning rather than attempting to translate legem in isolation.
The phrase legem amittere is particularly significant for researchers tracing the legal consequences of attainder, outlawry, and conviction for infamous crimes. Loss of one's law — loss of the right to swear — was one of the practical disabilities imposed on those adjudged infamous, and it surfaces in discussions of testimonial competency that persist into early modern evidence law.
Legem facere and the broader practice of wager of law (vadiatio legis) are foundational to understanding pre-modern English civil procedure. Researchers approaching early debt and detinue actions will encounter these terms repeatedly. The practice was formally abolished in England only in 1833, meaning it appears in sources spanning centuries and may not be labeled consistently across that period.
Legem ferre belongs to a different research track entirely — Roman public law and legislative history — and is more likely to appear in treatises on Roman law or in scholarship on the lex and plebiscitum distinction than in common law records.
Because legem functions grammatically as an object rather than a subject, historical indexes and digests may not list these phrases under "legem" at all. Researchers should search under the operative verb — amittere, facere, ferre — when working through older indexes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) treats legem accurately as a grammatical form rather than an independent legal term, presenting it as a gateway to the discrete phrases in which it appears. The entry is functional but spare — Black's identifies the three principal phrases and provides brief glosses without extended explanation of the underlying procedures.
What Black's does not supply, and what researchers will need to seek elsewhere, is substantive treatment of the procedures behind the phrases. The mechanics of wager of law — the number of compurgators required, the forms of oath, the circumstances permitting or barring the procedure — require recourse to Bracton, Glanvill, or Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III) for adequate treatment. Similarly, the Roman legislative context for legem ferre is better addressed in sources on Roman public law than in any common law dictionary.
No significant divergence exists among historical dictionaries on the core meanings of these phrases. The terms were stable in their Latin forms, and the primary variation across sources is depth of treatment rather than interpretive disagreement.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrases legem amittere and legem facere are specific to English common law history and have no operative role in modern Anglo-American law. Legem ferre belongs to Roman law and civil law traditions. Neither set of phrases carries jurisdictional variation in modern practice — they are historical artifacts encountered in primary sources, not active legal standards.