Definition
Latin: "for the sake of gain" or "for the sake of lucre." A phrase from criminal law describing the specific intent element historically required to constitute larceny. When a person takes another's property lucri causa, the taking is motivated by a desire for financial gain or profit — distinguishing larceny from other unauthorized takings driven by malice, mischief, or temporary use.
In older common law and civil law formulations, proof of lucri causa was treated as an essential component of theft. The phrase captured the acquisitive motive at the heart of larceny: the offender intends not merely to deprive the owner, but to benefit personally from the taking.
Common Confusion
Lucri causa is sometimes conflated with the general mens rea for larceny (intent to steal) or with the requirement of intent to permanently deprive. These are related but distinct concepts. Intent to steal — the animus furandi — is the broader category. Lucri causa refers specifically to the gainful motive within that intent. Historically, civil law theorists treated lucri causa as the motive, while animus furandi described the operative will. Common law courts eventually collapsed this distinction, finding that a separate gainful-motive element was not required as an independent element under English and American law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter lucri causa most often in two contexts: historical larceny doctrine and comparative criminal law analysis drawing on Roman and civilian sources.
The phrase carries a trap for historical researchers. Burrill's Law Dictionary correctly notes that the expression, though derived from Justinian's Institutes (Inst. 4.1.1, where the operative phrasing is lucri faciendi gratia), was subsequently held inapplicable as a discrete element under the common law. The citation in Burrill to Russell and Ryan's Crown Cases (Russ. & R. C. C. 292) signals that English courts had already rejected a strict lucri causa requirement before most American treatise writers were working. A researcher reading early American larceny cases that invoke the term should not assume it was carrying the same doctrinal weight as in the civil law tradition — courts often used it descriptively rather than as a formal element.
The Nevada cases cited in Black's 2nd edition — State v. Ryan and State v. Slingerland — are among the more accessible American authorities that treat lucri causa in a larceny context and can serve as entry points for tracing how American jurisdictions handled the civil law inheritance on this point.
In corpus research, lucri causa will appear embedded in general larceny discussions, theft treatises, and comparativist commentary on Roman law influence on American criminal law. It will not typically appear as a standalone doctrine in modern materials, and its absence from twentieth-century sources is itself informative: the specific motive element dissolved into the broader intent-to-steal formulation.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries largely agree on the core meaning — gain-seeking motive for theft — but differ usefully in depth and emphasis.
Black's (both editions) present the term tersely as a descriptor of larcenous intent, oriented toward American practice. The 2nd edition adds the Nevada case citations, giving the term some common law grounding.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the briefest, essentially glossing the term as "the motive which induces theft" and moving on. It adds no doctrinal nuance.
Burrill's is the most historically useful. It traces the expression to Blackstone's Commentaries (4 Bl. Com. 232), connects it to the Institutes passage (Inst. 4.1.1), and — crucially — notes that the expression was subsequently held inapplicable under the common law. This is the critical divergence: civil law required lucri causa as an element; common law did not treat it as a separate formal requirement. Burrill's entry thus flags the civil-to-common-law transition that researchers need to understand to use sources correctly.
None of the historical dictionaries discuss the modern fate of the concept or its absorption into general larceny intent doctrine, which is a gap researchers should account for when moving from historical to contemporary materials.
Jurisdictional Note
The strict lucri causa requirement was rejected in English common law before American jurisdictions had fully consolidated their own larceny doctrine, leaving some variation in early American case law on whether gainful motive was a formally pleaded element. Modern American criminal codes, including most Model Penal Code-influenced statutes, do not use the phrase or recognize it as a separate element; the concept is absorbed into "purpose to deprive."
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Property Law Encyclopedia — Personal Property: Gifts (Inter Vivos, Causa Mortis — Delivery, Intent, Acceptance) [property_133]: Relevant for the parallel use of causa terminology (causa mortis) in property doctrine, illustrating how Latin causa phrases carry distinct legal meanings across different doctrinal contexts.