Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "because it is given to us to understand" or "because it has been made known to us." In legal usage, the phrase functioned as a formal recital appearing in writs and pleadings, typically at the opening of an information or presentment, to signal that the matter had been brought to the court's or sovereign's attention through official channels. It served as a conventional introduction establishing the basis for official knowledge or judicial notice of a fact or complaint — essentially a formulaic acknowledgment that the relevant information was received or understood before the proceeding could be initiated.
The phrase is closely associated with the writ and pleading forms of English common law, where Latin recitals performed structural and jurisdictional functions. Its use indicated that the Crown or court was acting on received information rather than its own spontaneous motion, which carried procedural significance in distinguishing different categories of official action.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern legal sources: English writ books, formularies, ecclesiastical pleadings, and early common law reports. Researchers encountering it in manuscript or printed sources from roughly the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries should treat it as a formulaic opening clause rather than a substantive legal standard. Its presence signals the genre of document — most likely an information, inquisition, or official presentment — rather than conveying independent legal meaning.
Because the phrase is procedural Latin boilerplate, it rarely appears in treatises that explain doctrine. Instead, it surfaces in practical form books and precedent collections. Researchers tracing the history of informations or qui tam actions may encounter this recital as part of the standard pleading structure for those instruments. It should not be confused with terms that define rights or remedies; it is an introductory marker, not a legal test.
The Law Mind corpus is unlikely to contain standalone doctrinal discussion of this phrase. Researchers should search for it in the context of writ forms, pleading precedents, and historical formularies rather than in commentary literature. If the phrase appears in a document you are analyzing, it is more productive to identify the type of writ or proceeding it introduces than to analyze the phrase itself in isolation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry is minimal — characterizing the phrase simply as Latin for "because it is given to us to understand" — and provides no doctrinal context or procedural elaboration. This sparseness is itself instructive: Bouvier treated the term as a known formula requiring only translation, not explanation, which confirms its status as boilerplate familiar to practitioners of his era but not productive of independent legal doctrine.
No divergence exists across historical sources because the term does not appear to have generated competing definitions. What the historical sources collectively miss is any account of when and why the formula fell out of use. As pleading was progressively reformed through the nineteenth century — particularly under the English Judicature Acts and American field codes — Latin formulaic recitals of this type were abolished or rendered obsolete. The phrase therefore has no modern procedural counterpart and should be understood as a relic of common law pleading form.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase belongs to the English common law tradition and its American colonial inheritance. It is not a feature of civil law or equity practice in any distinct sense. In American jurisdictions, its use effectively ended with procedural reform movements of the mid-nineteenth century.