Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "forasmuch as," "because," or "to the intent that." It appears in medieval and early modern legal texts as a connective or causal phrase, typically introducing a recital, a condition, or the stated purpose of a grant, pleading, or legal instrument. The phrase functions grammatically to link an operative clause to its stated reason or object — roughly equivalent to "whereas" or "inasmuch as" in modern legal drafting.
Why It Matters in Research
PUR TANT QUE belongs to the vocabulary of Law French, the Anglo-Norman legal dialect that dominated English legal writing from the Norman Conquest through roughly the seventeenth century. Researchers encountering this phrase in historical records, plea rolls, year books, or early English treatises should recognize it as structural connective language rather than a term of art with independent legal significance. Its presence signals that what follows is a statement of purpose, cause, or condition within the instrument.
The principal research trap is misreading the phrase as substantive rather than functional. Because Law French phrases were often compressed or abbreviated in manuscript sources, PUR TANT QUE may appear in variant spellings or in partially anglicized forms. Researchers working in original documents rather than printed transcriptions should approach spelling with flexibility.
The phrase is most likely to appear in instruments involving grants of land, royal charters, letters patent, and early pleading forms — contexts where formal recitals of purpose were standard. It will rarely if ever appear in modern legal documents. Any modern appearance is almost certainly a quotation from or reference to a historical source.
Because the phrase carries no technical legal meaning of its own beyond its connective function, it does not generate significant doctrinal literature. Research value lies in correctly parsing the surrounding instrument, not in the phrase itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary supply identical definitions — "forasmuch as; because; to the intent that" — and both cite Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language as authority. The brevity of both entries reflects the phrase's status as a grammatical connector rather than a legal concept warranting extended analysis. Neither dictionary offers examples of the phrase in use within actual instruments.
Burrill's entry is marginally more expansive in its surrounding context, appearing alongside related Law French vocabulary such as PURALLE and PURLIEU, suggesting that the compiler grouped these terms by proximity in the alphabetical run of the source dictionary rather than by thematic connection. This is worth noting for researchers navigating Burrill's: the entries immediately surrounding PUR TANT QUE address perambulation and forest law, but that proximity is editorial accident, not conceptual relationship.
Neither historical dictionary flags any jurisdictional variation, which is expected — Law French was the register of English (not continental or colonial) legal practice, and the phrase's meaning was fixed and narrow.
Jurisdictional Note
PUR TANT QUE is a term of English legal history. It has no independent life in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions except as a historical quotation. Researchers in American legal history may encounter it in early colonial instruments drawing on English drafting conventions, but it did not survive as active legal vocabulary in any American jurisdiction.