Definition
Per legem terras (Latin: "by the law of the land") is a phrase drawn from Magna Carta signifying that no person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property except through lawful process recognized by the established legal order. In practice, the phrase is treated as a historical and doctrinal equivalent of "due process of law" — the requirement that government action against a person follow legally prescribed procedures and substantive limits.
The phrase originates in Chapter 39 (sometimes numbered Chapter 29 in later reissues) of Magna Carta 1215, which provided that no free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled, or destroyed except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. Per legem terras captures the second of those two guarantees.
Common Confusion
Per legem terras and "due process of law" are functionally synonymous in American constitutional usage, but they are not interchangeable in all contexts. Per legem terras is the Latin formulation tied specifically to Magna Carta's text and its common law lineage. Due process of law is the governing constitutional standard under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and carries a body of modern doctrine — substantive due process, procedural due process, incorporation — that was built long after the Magna Carta phrase was in ordinary use. Researchers should not assume that historical commentary on per legem terras maps cleanly onto contemporary due process doctrine, or vice versa.
The phrase is also occasionally confused with per legem communem (by the common law) and per judicium parium (by the judgment of peers), which represent the companion guarantee in the same Magna Carta clause. The two prongs — judgment of peers and law of the land — were distinct in origin and sometimes given distinct interpretations in early American cases.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a research artifact. You are unlikely to encounter it in modern opinions or briefs, but you will encounter it frequently in:
— Early American constitutional cases and treatises interpreting state due process and law-of-the-land clauses, where courts cited Magna Carta directly and used per legem terras as shorthand.
— State constitutional history. Many state constitutions, particularly those drafted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, used "law of the land" rather than "due process of law." Courts interpreting those clauses routinely invoked per legem terras and its Magna Carta lineage to define the guarantee's scope. Researchers tracing the meaning of a state's law-of-the-land clause need to follow this Latin thread into the early case law.
— Treatise literature from Coke through Kent and Story. Edward Coke's commentary on Magna Carta in the Second Institute is the foundational source for the equation of per legem terras with due process, and American jurists of the founding and antebellum periods relied heavily on that equation. Research into the original understanding of due process must engage this lineage.
— The phrase marks a transition point in legal vocabulary. As the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) nationalized due process and the phrase "due process of law" became the dominant constitutional formulation, per legem terras receded from active use. Sources before roughly 1870 may use the Latin phrase where later sources would use "due process." This shift can create apparent gaps in a keyword search if a researcher uses only modern terminology.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) defines per legem terras as "by the law of the land; by due process of law," treating the two phrases as direct equivalents. The entry cites United States v. Kendall, 26 Fed. Cas. 748; Appeal of Ervine, 16 Pa. 263, 55 Am. Dec. 499; and Rhinehart v. Schuyler, 7 Ill. 519 — cases that illustrate the phrase's active use in federal and state courts through the mid-nineteenth century.
What Black's does not capture is the contested interpretive history of the phrase itself. Coke's reading of Magna Carta — equating per legem terras with due process and treating it as a substantive limit on legislative power — was influential in America but was not universally accepted. Some early commentators read the phrase as purely procedural, limiting only executive and judicial action. This substantive-versus-procedural debate, which later became central to Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, has roots in competing readings of per legem terras. Historical sources that treat the phrase as a settled synonym for due process may be obscuring that earlier contestation.
No entry for this phrase appears in earlier general legal dictionaries at the level of detail that the constitutional stakes warrant. Researchers should supplement Black's with Coke's Second Institute and with Hamilton's and Webster's contributions to the New York ratification debates, where the law-of-the-land formula was directly argued.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase carries particular weight in Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois jurisprudence, reflecting the cases Black's cites. State courts in jurisdictions whose constitutions used "law of the land" rather than "due process" developed independent bodies of interpretation around this phrase that may diverge from federal due process doctrine.