OPE CONSILIO

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

OPE CONSILIOAuthored
The Law Mind • 644 words
Definition
Latin: "by aid and counsel." A civil law term describing participation in a wrong through assistance and advice rather than direct action. The phrase identifies a class of secondary actor — one who enables or facilitates the commission of an offense without being the immediate perpetrator. It is the civil law functional equivalent of the common law concept of aiding and abetting. Frequently written in its expanded form, ope et consilio.
Common Confusion
Ope consilio and ope et consilio are the same phrase; the shorter form simply drops the conjunction and the noun for "and." Neither form should be confused with the narrower idea of mere counsel or advice alone — the term requires both the aid (ope) and the counsel (consilio) components working together to identify the secondary participant. Researchers encountering only one word should not assume a different legal category applies.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in civil law contexts and in scholarship tracing the Roman law roots of accessory liability. Researchers working in common law sources from the 17th through 19th centuries may encounter it in treatises that drew direct comparisons between civil and common law systems — a common practice before the two traditions fully diverged in Anglo-American legal writing. The primary research trap is anachronism. Modern common law accessory doctrine — including statutory formulations of aiding and abetting — developed on its own track. When historical sources use ope consilio, they are invoking a civilian framework. Importing that framework's precise contours into a common law analysis risks category error. The phrases are functionally similar but not legally interchangeable, and the institutional structures supporting them differ. A secondary trap is source depth. Ope consilio appears in Justinian's Institutes (Book IV) as cited by Rapalje & Lawrence, meaning its authoritative home is Roman law. Researchers who encounter it in a 19th-century American or English treatise are typically reading a learned author's comparative gloss, not primary domestic authority. The term itself carried no independent doctrinal weight in common law courts. Within the Law Mind corpus, this term is a connecting thread between Roman law sources, civil law commentary, and the historical development of accessory and accomplice liability. It rewards researchers tracing that lineage but should not be treated as a standalone doctrinal anchor in common law research.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in complete agreement: all define the phrase as "by aid and counsel," identify it as a civil law term, note its application to accessories, and flag the functional equivalence to common law aiding and abetting. All three also note the fuller form ope et consilio. Rapalje & Lawrence alone cites the primary source — Justinian's Institutes, Book IV — which is a useful anchor for researchers who need to trace the term to its root. What the historical dictionaries do not do is elaborate on the precise Roman law distinction between the actor who provided aid and the one who provided counsel, or whether those functions had to be combined in a single person. Burrill (cited by Black's) offered the comparative framing but no deeper analysis. Researchers who need the civil law doctrine in full will need to go beyond these dictionary entries to the Institutes directly or to civilian commentary.
Jurisdictional Note
As a civil law term, ope consilio has no operative role in common law jurisdictions as a standalone doctrine. It may appear in Louisiana legal materials, mixed civil-common law jurisdictions, or in comparative law scholarship, but it does not function as binding authority in any U.S. common law state.
Related Terms
Ope et consilio — Accessory — Accomplice — Aiding and abetting — Principal in the second degree — Participis criminis — Civil law — Common law — Accessory before the fact
OPE CONSILIOmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
Lat. By aid and counsel. A civil law term applied to acces- saries, similar in import to the "aiding and abetting" of the common law. Often writ ten "ope et consilio." Burrill.
OPE CONSILIOmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
Lat. By aid and counsel. <A civil law term applied to accessaries, similar in import to the “aiding and abetting” .of the common law. Often written “ope et consilio.” Burrill. OPEN, v. To render aecessible, visible, or available; to submit or subject to examination, inquiry, or review, by the removal of restrictions or impediments. —Open a case. In practice. To open a case is to begin it; to make an initiatory explanation of its features to the court, jury, referee, etc., by outlining the nature of the transaction on which it is founded, the questions involved, and the character an eneral course of the evidence to be adduced. pen a commission. To enter upon the duties under a commission, or commence to act under a commission, is so termed in English law. Thus, the judges of assize and nist prius derive their authority to act under or by virtue of commissions directed to them for that purpose; and, when they commence acting under the powers so committed to them, they are said to open the commissions; and the day on which they so commence their proceedings is thence termed the “commission day of the assizes.” Brown.—Open a court. To open a court is to make a formal announcement, usually by the crier or bailiff, that its . 854 ‘being shown against the rule. OPEN , session has now begun and that the business before the court will be proceeded with—Open a credit. To accept or pay the draft of a cor respondent who has not furnished funds. Pardessué, no. —Open a deposition. To. break the seals by which it was secured, and lay {t open to view, or to bring it into court ready for use—-Open a ju ent. To lift or relax the bar of finality and conclusiveness which it imposes so as to permit a re-examination of the merits of the action in which it was rendered. This is done at the instance of a party showing good cause why the execution of the judgment would be inequitable. It so far annuls the’ sudan as to prevent its enforcement until the final determination upon it, but does not in the mean time release its lien upon real estate. See Insurance Co. v. Beale, 110 Pa. 321, 1 Atl. 926. —Open a rule. To restore or recall a rule which has been made absolute to its conditional state, as a rule nisi, so as to readmit of cause Thus, when a rule to show cause has been made absolute under a mistaken impression that no counsel had been instructed to show cause against it, it is ‘usual for the party at whose instance the rule was obtained to consent to have the rule opened, by which all the proceedings subsequent to the day when cause ought to have en shown against it are in effect nullified, and the rule is then argued in the ordinary 1A: Brown. Open a street or highway. To establish it by law and make it passable and available for public travel. See Reed v. Toledo, 18 Ohio, 1fi1; Wilcoxon v. San Luis Obispo, 101 Cal. 508, 35 Pac. 988; Gaines v. Hudson County Ave. Com’rs, 87 N. J. Law, 12.—Open bids. To o bids received on a foreclosure or other judicial sale is to reject or cancel them for fraud, mistake, or other cause, and order a resale of the proper . Andrews v. Scotton, 2 Bland (Md.) : en the plesciaae To state briefly at a trial before a jury the substance of the sass rp This {is done by the junior counsel for the plaintiff at the commencement of the trial. OPEN, adj. Patent; visible; apparent; Notorious; not clandestine; not closed, settled, fixed, or terminated... —Open bulk. In the mass; exposed to view: not tied or sealed up. In re Sanders (C. C.). 52 Fed. 802, 18 L. R. A. 549.—Openm court. term may mean either a court which has been formally convened and declared open for the transaction of its proper judicial business, or a court which is freely open to the approach of all decent and orderly persons in the character of spectators. Hobart v. Hobart, 45 Iowa, 501; over v. Bird, 56 N. J. Law, 228, 28 Atl. 428; Ex parte Branch, 63 Ala. 383; Hays -v. Railroad Co., 99 Md. 413, 58 Atl. 439. doors. In Scotch law. “Letters of open doors” are process which empowers the messenger, or officer of the Jaw, to break open doors of houses or rooms in which the debtor has placed his oods. Bell.—Open fields, or meadows. In glish law. Fields which are undivided, but belong to separate owners; the part of each owner is marked off by boundaries until the crop has been carried off, when the pasture is shared promiscuously by. the joint herd of all the owners. Elton, Commons, 31; Sweet.— + pa law. The making or waging of law. agna Charta, c. 21. m season. That portion of the year wherein the laws for the preservation of game and fish permit the killing of a particular species of game or the taking of a particular variety of fish—Open theft. In Saxon law. The same with the Latin ‘‘fortum manifestum,” (q. v.) As to open “Account,” “Corporation,” ‘“Entry.” “Insolvency,” “Lewdness,” “Policy,” ‘Possession,’ and “Verdict,” see those titles.
OPE CONSILIOmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883
-By aid and counsel. A civil law term applied to accessories, similar in import to the "aiding and abetting" of the common law. Often written ope et consilio. (Inst. 4, 1, 11, 12.)-Burrill.

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