PRI - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

PRIAuthored

The Law Mind • 779 words

Definition

PRI is a Latin abbreviation appearing in early English legal authorities, functioning as a shorthand for phrases beginning with "pri-" or as part of compound maxims in the civil and common law tradition. In the corpus of historical legal texts, PRI most commonly appears as part of the Latin maxim fragment "rex et respublica ex justa causa meam auferre [possunt]" — meaning "the king and the state may take my property for just cause" — where PRI-prefixed terms signal foundational principles of sovereign authority, priority of right, and prerogative power.

As an abbreviation in historical legal citation, PRI should be distinguished from its use as a standalone term. Burrill's Law Dictionary references the phrase in connection with royal prerogative and the lawful basis for state expropriation, citing 12 Co. 13 and noting that Branch's Principia mistranslated or inverted the maxim's meaning — a significant cautionary example for researchers relying on secondary digest sources.

Common Confusion

PRI as it appears in Burrill should not be confused with the modern acronym PRI (Public Radio International), which has no legal significance. Within legal texts, researchers may also confuse PRI-prefixed abbreviations with PRIM (primogeniture), PRIV (privilege or privy), or PRIN (principal). Context — particularly whether the surrounding text concerns sovereign authority, priority of right, or substitution of property — is the primary disambiguating factor. When in doubt, trace to the primary citation rather than relying on the digest entry.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering PRI in pre-nineteenth-century English legal texts face a layered interpretive problem. The abbreviation may signal:

1. A Latin maxim fragment. When PRI appears at the head of a maxim or as part of a marginal citation, it frequently introduces or abbreviates a principle touching royal prerogative, priority of claims, or the state's power over private property.

2. A transcription or printing artifact. Early printed law reports and digests frequently dropped syllables or letter groups in marginal notes and cross-references. PRI appearing in isolation in a Burrill or similar digest entry may be a truncated catch-word rather than a self-standing term.

3. A reference to the maxim on sovereign taking. The specific Burrill passage (entries 330–331) connects PRI to the principle that sovereign authority can lawfully appropriate private property — but only for just cause. The warning that Branch's Principia translated this maxim "to mean the very reverse" is a direct alert that secondary sources in the Law Mind corpus may carry an inverted reading of a foundational prerogative principle. Researchers working on eminent domain history, royal prerogative, or the development of takings doctrine in Anglo-American law must verify against the primary citation (12 Co. 13) rather than relying on digest paraphrase.

The Burrill entries surrounding PRI (330–331) also reference the substitution principle — that in some contexts a successor or substitute "succeeds in place of the thing sold" — drawing on Calvinus's Lexicon and 2 Bulstrode 312. This suggests that in certain manuscript and digest environments, PRI appears as part of a cluster of principles governing priority, substitution, and sovereign right that were treated together in early common law education.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment of PRI is fragmentary by nature — appearing at the junction of entries 330 and 331 in a passage that bridges two distinct maxims. This is characteristic of Burrill's method: Latin abbreviations and maxim fragments are embedded in running prose rather than headworded independently.

The passage does two things of note. First, it records a maxim on sovereign taking authority ("rex et respublica ex justa causa meam auferre") with a primary citation to 12 Co. 13 (Coke's Reports). Second, it flags that Branch's Principia — a widely circulated digest of legal maxims — rendered the maxim's meaning backwards. This is a rare instance of an historical dictionary actively correcting a competing secondary source, and it underscores a persistent hazard in working with digest literature: maxim collections were frequently compiled at remove from primary texts, and errors of translation or inversion could propagate across generations of citation.

No other historical dictionary in the current Law Mind corpus (Black's, Bouvier's, Tomlin's, etc.) headwords PRI as a standalone entry, which is consistent with its status as an abbreviation rather than a term of art.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: FINE (for the payment/forfeiture context surrounding entries 330–331); ROYAL PREROGATIVE (for the sovereign taking maxim and its common law development); EMINENT DOMAIN (for the Anglo-American doctrinal evolution of the just-cause taking principle).

PRImain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

(330) succeeds in place of the thing [sold.] case, or one which has not occurred beCalv. Lex. citing Gæddœus. A maxim quoted in the early English books. 2 Bulstr. 312. (331) meam auferre. The king and the state [the government,] may take my property for just cause. 12 Co. 13. Translated in Branch's Principia to mean the very reverse. tice. A fine or payment which was due to ceps et respublica ex justa causa possunt rem the king on suing out the writ of præcipe, at the commencement of the proceedings to levy a fine of lands. 2 Bl. Com. 350. (332) 3. Burr. Circ. Evid. 3, 119. A fact which is the principal and ultimate object of an inquiry, and respecting the existence of which a definite belief is required to be formed. Id. 3. (333) tortious taking and the tortious detention. committed for trial. 2 N. Y. Rev. St. Id. ibid. (334) having charge of it) as a place of custody and not of punishment; (sed hujusmodi interdicta sunt à lege, quia carcer ad continendos et non puniendos haberi debeat.) Bract. fol. 104 b, 105. The whole drift of the chapter is to show that punishments should not be extended beyond their proper limits, and particularly, that where imprisonment was inflicted as a punishment, it should be attended with no unnecessary severities. This explanation clearly leads to the conclusion that a prison was, in Bracton's time, a place of punishment, as is directly shown, indeed, by other expressions of the same author; (sc. pœna carceris; the punishment of the prison,) and by the very common expression of Britton, punys par prison et par fyn. Fleta speaks of the cruelties inflicted upon prisoners in aggravation of their punishment, such as hanging up by the feet, loading with iron, &c. in terms of condemnation. Fleta, lib. 1, c. 26, §§ 4, 5. And see the whole chapter. (335) vidual, and of which he has the exclusive right of disposition; property of a specific, fixed and tangible nature, capable of being had in possession and transmitted to another, such as houses, lands and chattels. 29 Mississippi R. 21, 32. PRIVATE STATUTE (or ACT.) A statute which operates only upon particular persons, and private concerns. 1 Bl. Com. 86.-An act which relates to certain individuals, or to particular classes of men. Dwarris on Statutes, 629.-A statute which concerns only a particular species; a particular thing, or a particular person. 4 Co. 76 a. 1 Term R. 125. A statute which relates to a particular place or town. 4 Co. 76 b. Skin. 350. And see Hale's Hist. Com. Law, (Runnington's ed.) 3. Generally speaking, statutes are public, and a private statute may rather be considered as an exception to a general rule. It operates upon a particular thing or private persons. 1 Kent's Com. 459. (336) designated by law. See 1 Burr. Pr. 89- terms. Heinecc. Elem. Jur. Civ. ub. sup. 92. And see Tayl. Civ. Law, 234, 235. 46, note (e.)

PRIname

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Initialism of Public Radio International.

PRInoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Initialism of primary rate interface. | Initialism of Population Reference Intake.

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