Definition
A Latin term meaning "to obey." In legal contexts, obtemperare denotes compliance with a judicial order, decree, or legally binding command. The term appears most directly in Scots law, where it survives in the anglicized form "obtemper," meaning to comply with or give effect to a court judgment or interlocutor. A party ordered by a Scottish court to perform or refrain from an act is said to be required to obtemper the decree.
The term also appears in the maxim: Obtemperandum est consuetudini rationabili tanquam legi — "A reasonable custom is to be obeyed as law." In this usage, obtemperare carries the broader sense of legal deference or submission to an authority recognized as binding, whether that authority is a court, a statute, or an established custom.
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Common Confusion
Researchers encountering obtemperare in historical sources should not conflate it with mere voluntary compliance or ordinary obedience. In its legal application — particularly through the Scots "obtemper" — the term implies a legal duty enforceable by the court, not a discretionary act. Failure to obtemper a decree in Scots law can give rise to contempt proceedings. The term is also distinct from "execute" or "implement" as applied to judgments; obtemper specifically emphasizes the responding party's obligation to comply, rather than the court's or officer's act of enforcement.
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Why It Matters in Research
Obtemperare is essentially a term of Scots law, and researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in that context or in Latin legal maxims. A few navigational points:
First, the Scots procedural use of "obtemper" remains live in Scottish legal practice, so historical sources here connect directly to current Scots court usage. When reading Scottish case reports or court orders across any period, the instruction to "obtemper the decree" is a standard formula meaning the responding party must fulfill whatever the court has directed.
Second, the maxim Obtemperandum est consuetudini rationabili tanquam legi appears in early English common law sources as well as Scots authorities, most notably through Coke's reports. Burrill attributes the maxim to Tyrringham's Case (4 Co. 38b), a real Elizabethan-era property decision. Researchers tracing the legal authority of custom — particularly in land law, copyhold tenure, or early common law arguments about local usage — may encounter this maxim and need to trace it to its primary source rather than relying on dictionary attribution alone.
Third, the term is a useful marker for identifying documents with Scottish provenance or Civilian influence. English legal sources of the same period tend not to use obtemperare; its presence in a text is a soft signal of Scottish, Continental, or academically trained authorship.
Fourth, researchers should not expect to find this term indexed in general English legal digests or encyclopedias. It is not a common law term of art in the English sense. Searches in Law Mind's corpus for this term will return more targeted results in Scottish materials, ecclesiastical court records, and treatises with Civilian roots.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: obtemperare means "to obey," and the term gives rise to the Scots legal "obtemper." Black's first and second editions are in substantive agreement, though the second edition's entry appears to have a transcription gap (the phrase following "To" is truncated). Burrill is the most useful of the three for research purposes: he supplies the maxim in full, identifies the source as Tyrringham's Case via Coke's Reports, and cites Brande as an intermediate authority, giving researchers a traceable chain for the maxim's transmission into Anglo-American legal dictionaries.
None of the three dictionaries expand on procedural consequences — what happens when a party fails to obtemper — or situate the term within the broader architecture of Scots civil procedure. For that, researchers need Scottish-specific sources rather than these general law dictionaries.
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Jurisdictional Note
"Obtemper" is an active term in Scots law and appears in Scottish court decrees and procedural rules. It has no direct functional equivalent as a term of art in English or American common law practice, where the concept is expressed through enforcement and contempt mechanisms without the term itself.
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