Definition
MENTI is a Latin abbreviation appearing in two distinct legal contexts in historical sources, functioning as a shorthand root connecting two separate compound terms: (1) lex et consuetudo parliamenti (law and custom of parliament), and (2) querela inofficiosi testamenti (complaint of an undutiful will). Because historical dictionaries treat both meanings under entries beginning with this root, researchers must identify which compound term the source intends.
1. Parliamentary usage. As used in discussions of parliamentary law, menti appears as a fragment of the phrase lex et consuetudo parliamenti — the body of rules, precedents, and customary practices governing the English Parliament as a self-regulating court. Parliament was understood not merely as a legislature but as a superior court possessing its own jurisdiction and procedural law, which courts of common law could not superintend.
2. Civil law usage. In the civil law tradition, menti functions as a compressed reference to the querela inofficiosi testamenti — an action available to a child who had been unjustly disinherited or deliberately passed over in a parent's will. The action did not require proof of actual mental incapacity; instead, the law presumed that a parent who disinherited a child without sufficient cause must have been of unsound mind (non compos mentis). The remedy, if successful, was rescission of the will.
Common Confusion
The two meanings sharing this dictionary root are entirely unrelated. The parliamentary usage belongs to English constitutional and procedural law; the civil law usage belongs to Roman inheritance law and its successors. Historical dictionaries that organize entries alphabetically sometimes place both definitions under the same head term without clearly separating them. A researcher who encounters a citation to a "menti" passage must determine from context — parliamentary practice versus testamentary law — which doctrine is at issue before pursuing further sources.
Additionally, the civil law action should not be confused with a direct challenge to testamentary capacity. The querela inofficiosi testamenti was a distinct remedy: it presumed incapacity as a legal fiction to justify relief, rather than requiring the challenger to prove actual mental incompetence at the time of execution. Modern will contests based on lack of testamentary capacity operate differently and are not the historical successor to this action.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century English and American legal materials will encounter this abbreviation most often in one of two narrow contexts. First, in parliamentary law treatises and historical constitutional sources, the phrase lex et consuetudo parliamenti appears frequently in discussions of parliamentary privilege and the limits of judicial review over legislative proceedings. Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice is the standard reference; American courts occasionally imported the phrase when discussing legislative privilege and the speech-or-debate doctrine, so the parliamentary meaning may appear in unexpected American jurisdictional contexts.
Second, in early American equity and probate sources — particularly those drawing on Kent's Commentaries or civil law authority — the querela inofficiosi testamenti appears as background doctrine explaining why certain forced-heirship principles did or did not carry over into American law. The action never took root in Anglo-American common law, which did not recognize a child's forced share against a testator's free disposition. When nineteenth-century American treatise writers and courts discuss this civil law action, they are typically explaining what American law rejected, not what it adopted. Researchers should not read these references as evidence that the action was available in American courts.
The abbreviation itself is not a standalone term of art in modern legal usage. It will appear in historical dictionaries and treatises as a fragment or compressed reference. Anyone citing a passage that uses menti as a heading should verify the full phrase being discussed before relying on the entry.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) treats menti as an entry point to both meanings, handling them as sequential sub-definitions. The first edition provides the parliamentary definition with a citation to May's Parliamentary Practice (6th ed.) and the civil law definition with references to Calvin and Kent's Commentaries. The second edition's treatment of the civil law action is nearly identical in substance to the first but appears truncated in available sources. Burrill's Law Dictionary offers the most contextually useful entry, attributing the parliamentary usage to Blackstone and citing Shaw C.J. in 4 Metcalf's Reports, and describing the civil law action as a complaint against an inofficious or undutiful will with fuller language about its purpose — rescission of a will that disinherited a child unjustly.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is incomplete in the surviving text and appears to conflate or transition between the two meanings without clean separation, making it less reliable as a standalone reference for either doctrine.
None of the historical dictionaries adequately flag the critical distinction between the querela inofficiosi testamenti as a presumed-incapacity remedy and a modern capacity-based will contest. Researchers relying solely on these entries risk mischaracterizing the civil law action.
Jurisdictional Note
The parliamentary law meaning is specific to the English and British Parliament and its historical American analogues in state and federal legislative bodies. The civil law meaning never became operative doctrine in American common law jurisdictions; its appearance in American sources is almost exclusively explanatory or comparative. Louisiana, as a civil law jurisdiction, has its own forced-heirship doctrine, but that doctrine derives from French rather than Roman law directly and should not be mapped onto the querela inofficiosi testamenti without care.