Definition
Nue is a Law French adjective meaning "nude," "naked," or "bare." In legal usage, it describes a legal instrument, obligation, or right that is unclothed by formality, consideration, or ceremony — stripped of the elements that would otherwise give it binding legal force or procedural standing. The term appears most often in compound phrases and maxims of the older common law, where it distinguishes bare, unadorned legal forms from those properly constituted or clothed with requisite legal substance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Nue" is not a standard English word. As a French-origin term, it means "naked" or "bare" in French, occasionally appearing in English artistic or literary contexts as an adjective or in the phrase "au naturel."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry. Webster's 1913 recognizes "nude" (from Latin nudus) as meaning naked, bare, or unclothed, and notes its legal application in the phrase "nude contract" — a contract without consideration.
The gap between common and legal meaning is one of register rather than substance. In ordinary speech, nakedness is physical; in legal usage, nue signals the absence of legal clothing — consideration, form, or ceremony — that would otherwise make an obligation enforceable. The physical metaphor is carried directly into doctrine.
Common Confusion
Nue should not be confused with its Latin cognate nudus or the English derivative "nude" as used in phrases like nudum pactum (a nude pact, i.e., a bare agreement without consideration). The words share the same root and the same legal metaphor, but nue is specifically the Law French form, appearing in older English Year Books and abridgments written in that hybrid legal-French dialect. Researchers encountering nue in a French-language legal source are reading the same concept that appears as nudus in Latin maxims and "nude" in later English legal writing. The form, not the meaning, distinguishes them.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter nue almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — Year Books, early abridgments, and treatises composed in Law French, a legal dialect that persisted in English courts from the Norman Conquest through the seventeenth century. Because Law French was a professional argot rather than vernacular French, nue functions as a term of art within that tradition, and its appearances are typically embedded in compound phrases (as Burrill's source fragment illustrates: ascun contracte est nue, et sauns garnement — "one kind of contract is bare, and without clothing").
The practical research trap is that nue and its compounds will not appear in modern legal indexes. To trace the doctrine behind the term — the distinction between enforceable and unenforceable obligations based on form or consideration — researchers must pivot to the Latin and English equivalents: nudum pactum, nude contract, bare contract, and the broader doctrine of consideration. The conceptual lineage is unbroken; the vocabulary shifts entirely as legal French fell out of use.
The corrupted or abbreviated state of many Law French manuscripts also means that nue may appear in fragments, as it does in Burrill's entry, where the source text trails off mid-sentence. Researchers should treat such entries as pointers to the broader doctrine rather than as complete definitions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the primary historical record here, defining nue as "nude; naked; bare" and quoting a Law French passage distinguishing contracts that are nue et sauns garnement (bare and without clothing) from those that are vestue (clothed). The metaphor of legal clothing — garnement — is the key: a contract or obligation is bare when it lacks the formal or substantive elements that dress it with legal enforceability.
Burrill's entry is fragmentary; the quoted passage breaks off before its conclusion. This is characteristic of Law French sources generally, and it reflects the derivative nature of legal dictionaries of that era, which often reproduced Year Book passages incompletely. What the entry establishes clearly, however, is the core meaning: nue signals the absence of legal sufficiency, and the term belongs to the same doctrinal cluster as nudum pactum and the law of consideration.
No other Law Mind shelf source addresses nue directly. The concept it names is, however, extensively treated under consideration, nudum pactum, and contract in later dictionaries and encyclopedia sources.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Law French term, nue has no current jurisdictional application. It is a historical artifact of English common law, relevant to research in English and, derivatively, American legal history. No modern jurisdiction uses the term in active legal practice or legislation.