Definition
In Roman and civil law, *privatus* means a private person or individual — that is, a person acting in a personal capacity rather than in any official, public, or governmental role. The term stands in contrast to a public officer, magistrate, or the state itself. Its primary legal significance in the common law tradition appears through the maxim *Privatorum conventio juri publico non derogat*: an agreement among private individuals cannot derogate from public or common right.
Common Confusion
*Privatus* as a Latin term of art should not be confused with the broader modern concept of "privacy" or privacy rights. *Privatus* identifies the *status* of a person as non-public — it says nothing about informational privacy, seclusion, or the constitutional and statutory privacy doctrines that dominate modern legal research. A researcher encountering *privatus* in a civil law or early common law source is reading about legal standing and capacity, not about privacy as a protected interest.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical importance of *privatus* in the Law Mind corpus is almost entirely mediated through the maxim it anchors. Researchers will encounter the term most often not as a standalone doctrinal concept but embedded in one of three Latin formulations that appear repeatedly across common law treatises and equity sources:
- *Privatorum conventio juri publico non derogat* (Digest 50.17.45.1)
- *Conventio privatorum non potest publico juri derogare* (quoted by Coke, Co. Litt. 166a)
- *Pacta privata non derogant juri publico*
These are functionally equivalent maxims. They establish that private agreements — no matter how clear or consensual — cannot override rules of public law, common right, or public policy. The maxim appears in contract law, property law, and equity contexts wherever a party attempts to contract away a right that the law treats as inalienable or a rule that exists for public benefit rather than individual convenience.
A key research trap: early sources citing this maxim use it in widely varying contexts, and the precise contours of what counts as "public right" or "common right" shifted considerably across periods and jurisdictions. In early common law usage, "common right" often referred to established legal custom or the general rules of the common law — not necessarily governmental or constitutional interests in the modern sense. Researchers reading Coke or his contemporaries should not import modern public-law assumptions into the maxim's application.
Burrill cross-references Broom's *Legal Maxims* (at page 543 in the relevant edition) as the synthesizing secondary source for this maxim's application. Broom is a natural next stop in the corpus for researchers who need the maxim traced through cases and applied across subject areas.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry: *privatus* as "a private person or individual," immediately followed by the Digest maxim and its English translation, the Coke citation, and the partial rendering *Pacta privata non derogant juri* (understood to complete as *publico*). This is a characteristically compact Burrill entry — the term itself is treated as nearly self-defining, with the substantive content front-loaded into the maxim.
What Burrill does not provide is any extended discussion of the Roman law background of *privatus* as a status concept, or its relationship to *publicus* as a formal jurisprudential category. For that, researchers must look beyond common law dictionaries to civil law sources and commentators on the Digest. The historical common law dictionaries generally treat *privatus* instrumentally — as the subject of the maxim — rather than as a jurisprudential category in its own right.
The Digest citation (50.17.45.1) is real and traceable. The Coke citation (Co. Litt. 166a) is equally verifiable. Broom's *Legal Maxims* is the standard Victorian-era synthesis. Researchers should be aware that page references to Broom vary by edition.
Jurisdictional Note
The maxim *privatorum conventio juri publico non derogat* operates across common law jurisdictions as a general principle of contract and public policy rather than as a jurisdiction-specific rule. Its application, however, depends heavily on what a given court at a given time classifies as "public right" — a determination that varies by jurisdiction, era, and subject matter.