Definition
Lingue (also spelled *linguæ*) is an archaic legal term referring to a mixed jury — a jury composed of persons of two different national origins, languages, or, in some historical American contexts, racial groups. The term derives from the Latin *lingua* (tongue, language, or people), reflecting the original medieval English practice of empaneling juries that included both native subjects and foreign nationals when a case involved a foreign party who might not receive fair treatment from an all-native jury.
In its primary historical sense, a jury *de medietate linguæ* — literally "of the half-tongue" — was a jury composed half of native-born subjects and half of aliens sharing the foreign party's nationality or language. The term *lingue* or *linguæ* appears in legal sources as a shorthand reference to this jury type.
In later American usage, as recorded in Black's Law Dictionary, the term was extended to describe juries composed partly of Black and partly of white men, adapting the mixed-jury concept to the racial demographics of post-Civil War America.
Common Confusion
Lingue should not be confused with the full Latin phrase *de medietate linguæ*, which is the formal name of the legal institution. *Lingue* or *linguæ* alone typically appears as an abbreviated reference within that phrase, and researchers encountering it in isolation may not immediately recognize the mixed-jury context. The term is also distinct from a general *foreign jury* or *jury de medietate*, which carry related but not identical meanings depending on the source period.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-modern English legal records, colonial American materials, or post-Civil War American court records may encounter this term in two distinct contexts that require careful differentiation.
In English and early colonial sources, lingue signals the *de medietate linguæ* procedure — a recognized mechanism for protecting alien merchants and foreign parties in commercial disputes. Its presence in a case record indicates the party was a foreign national and that the jury composition was formally contested or specially constituted. This is significant for tracing merchant law, admiralty practice, and the treatment of alien parties in early Anglo-American courts.
In post-Civil War American sources, the term's extension to racially mixed juries is historically significant and analytically fraught. Black's records the usage, but researchers should treat it with care: the legal status of racially mixed juries in this period was contested, and the terminology was inconsistently applied across jurisdictions. The mixed-race jury question was heavily litigated under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the use of *lingue* in this racial sense reflects an awkward grafting of an older procedural concept onto a new constitutional problem. Do not assume uniform legal meaning when this usage appears in American materials.
The term is rare enough that its appearance in a document is itself a signal — it suggests a drafter with classical legal training or deliberate use of technical terminology. In abridgments and digests, entries under *jury* or *alien* are more likely to capture the substance of the *de medietate linguæ* doctrine than entries under *lingue* itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the shelf sources and offers a compressed dual definition: the jury *de medietate linguæ* in its traditional sense, and the racially mixed jury in American application. The entry is notably brief and does not trace the English statutory origins of the *de medietate linguæ* procedure or explain the constitutional questions surrounding its American racial adaptation. No other shelf source provides independent coverage of the term in isolation.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: the English *de medietate linguæ* jury had a long statutory and common-law history — it appears in statutes from the reign of Edward III and was recognized in Blackstone's *Commentaries* — but that lineage is not recoverable from the Black's entry alone. Researchers needing the full doctrinal history of the institution must go beyond the term *lingue* and research *de medietate linguæ* directly.
Jurisdictional Note
The *de medietate linguæ* jury was an English common-law institution transplanted unevenly into American practice. Several states recognized it in the colonial and early republic period, but the doctrine never achieved uniform American adoption and was largely obsolete by the late nineteenth century. Its racial adaptation in some American jurisdictions was legally distinct and constitutionally contested in ways the English original was not.