Definition
A Latin phrase used in old English writs, meaning "because it is given to us to understand." The phrase functioned as a formal recital by which a court or issuing authority acknowledged that information had been brought to its attention, typically as a predicate to commanding or authorizing some judicial action. It is a term of pleading and writ practice, not a substantive legal doctrine, and belongs to the formal language of medieval and early modern common law procedure.
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Common Language
The component words are ordinary Latin: *quia* (because), *datum est* (it is given), *nobis* (to us), *intelligi* (to understand). While a Latin reader could parse the phrase from its parts, the significance in legal research is procedural and historical, not linguistic. The phrase has no counterpart in modern common-usage English and no entry in general dictionaries. Its meaning only becomes significant when encountered in the formal writs of the common law tradition.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English writ practice, Year Books, or pre-modern procedural records will encounter this phrase as a formulaic opener. Its function is jurisdictional and initiating: it signals that the court or crown has received a complaint or information and is acting on that basis. Understanding it prevents misreading a writ's operative command — the real legal action follows the *quia datum est nobis intelligi* clause, which is merely the recital of predicate knowledge.
Several practical traps apply:
- **Variant spelling and abbreviation.** The phrase appears in heavily abbreviated Latin in manuscript sources. The truncated form *Quia D. E. N. I.* or similar contractions appear in registers of writs and plea rolls. Researchers unfamiliar with Latin writ abbreviation conventions may fail to recognize the phrase at all.
- **Confusion with related formulaic phrases.** The writ registers of medieval England contain numerous *quia*-clauses (*quia constat nobis*, *quia intelleximus*) that serve similar but distinct functions. Each signals a slightly different basis for the court's knowledge or the ground for issuing the writ.
- **No modern procedural analog.** Modern civil procedure replaced writ-based initiation with notice pleading. This phrase has no functional equivalent in contemporary practice and will not appear in any post-Judicature Act English materials or post-Field Code American sources.
- **Corpus connections.** This phrase is most likely to surface in transcriptions of the Registrum Brevium, in early Chancery records, in Year Book commentaries, and in historical treatises on common law pleading such as those of Fitzherbert and Rastell.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) gives a terse but accurate gloss: "Because it is given to us to understand. Formal words in old writs." This is consistent with the phrase's function across the historical record. No elaboration is offered in that source, and no examples of the specific writs in which it appeared are identified — a gap that limits the entry's research utility.
Other major historical law dictionaries, including Bouvier and Tomlin's Law Dictionary, do not appear to have given this phrase a standalone entry, which is itself informative: the phrase was sufficiently formulaic that it was treated as transparent to practitioners trained in Latin writ procedure. Its appearance in Black's Supplemental indicates it was flagged primarily for the benefit of researchers and practitioners who could no longer be assumed to read Latin fluently, reflecting the late nineteenth and early twentieth century transition away from Latin pleading.
The phrase should not be read as a term of art with independent legal force. It is a recital — procedural throat-clearing — and historical dictionaries that treat it as such are correct.
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is exclusively a term of English common law writ practice and has no meaningful presence in American legal materials. American courts abandoned Latin writ formulas progressively through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with field code reforms in the mid-nineteenth century completing the break. Researchers encountering this phrase in American sources are almost certainly looking at a direct transplant from English precedent or a historical commentary on English procedure.
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