Definition
Lou le ley done chose is an archaic Law French maxim meaning "where the law gives a thing." The full expression conveys the principle that where the law confers a right, power, or entitlement upon a person, it also implicitly grants whatever is necessary to make that right or power effective — including any ancillary remedies or means required to carry it out. In practical terms: the law does not give with one hand and take away with the other. If a legal right is recognized, the law is understood to supply the means of enforcing or enjoying it.
The phrase operates as a canon of legal construction rather than a freestanding cause of action. Courts and commentators historically invoked it to fill gaps in statutory or common law schemes — reasoning that a legislature or the common law, having granted something, must have intended the recipient to be able to use it.
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Common Confusion
This maxim is sometimes loosely associated with the related Latin principle ubi jus ibi remedium ("where there is a right, there is a remedy"), but the two are distinct. Ubi jus ibi remedium addresses the availability of a remedy for a recognized legal injury. Lou le ley done chose operates at an earlier stage: it concerns the implied grant of the tools or incidents necessary to exercise the right itself, not merely the remedy when the right is violated. Conflating them produces analytical error, particularly in historical research where courts cite each for different propositions.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term presents several research challenges worth flagging directly.
**Spelling instability.** Law French orthography was never standardized, and this phrase appears in historical sources under multiple spellings — lou, lour, la ou; ley, lei, loy; done, donne; chose, chose, choise. Researchers searching digitized historical sources must anticipate variant forms. A single spelling search will miss a substantial portion of appearances.
**Corpus placement.** The phrase surfaces most frequently in older English common law materials — Year Books, early Chancery proceedings, and 17th- and 18th-century treatise literature — rather than American primary sources. Its appearance in American legal dictionaries like Black's is largely derivative of English antecedents. Researchers encountering it in American sources should generally expect it is being cited as received common law authority rather than domestic doctrine.
**Source material gap.** The Black's 2nd Edition entry provided in the source material appears garbled — the definition text supplied relates to lottery statutes under the California Penal Code, which has no apparent connection to this Law French maxim. This is almost certainly a digitization or indexing artifact. Researchers should not rely on that entry text as an accurate definition of the phrase and should seek the entry in a physical copy of Black's 2nd Edition or consult Bouvier's Law Dictionary, which handles Law French maxims more systematically.
**Substantive use in argument.** When this maxim appears in a brief or judicial opinion, the researcher's task is to identify what right the law has "given" and what the party claims is implied by that gift. The maxim is frequently used to argue for implied powers, implied easements, implied rights of access, or the availability of ancillary process. Understanding the maxim's function as a constructional tool — not a rule of substantive law — is essential to reading the argument correctly.
**Decline of use.** By the late 19th century, American courts had largely displaced Law French maxims with English-language formulations of the same principles. Appearances of this phrase in American materials after roughly 1850 are relatively rare and often signal either a highly technical equity argument or a practitioner working from older English authorities.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole dictionary source available for this entry, and as noted above, the supplied entry text is almost certainly a digitization error — the text describes lottery offenses under California law and bears no relation to the maxim. Researchers should treat the supplied Black's text as unreliable for this term.
The phrase is better documented in the Law French glossary tradition. Rastell's early English legal dictionary and later compilations by Termes de la Ley address Law French phrases of this type, though not always this one specifically. Bouvier's Law Dictionary (various editions) is the most systematic American treatment of Law French maxims and should be the first stop for historical dictionary support on terms of this class.
The underlying principle — that a legal grant carries with it the necessary incidents — is treated in Coke's Institutes and in Blackstone's Commentaries in English-language form, without using the Law French phrase. Researchers should expect that the substantive doctrine outlived the French terminology by centuries.
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Jurisdictional Note
As a maxim of the English common law, this phrase carries persuasive rather than binding authority in American jurisdictions. Its application varies by context: courts invoking it in statutory construction may treat it differently than courts applying it in common law property or equity analysis.
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