Definition
Latin: "Which was granted." A Latin phrase used in legal reports and case documentation to indicate that a point argued by counsel was conceded, agreed to, or acquiesced in by the court. It functions as a notation within the record of a proceeding or published report, confirming that the court accepted the argument or proposition put forward without contest or extended deliberation.
The phrase does not signal a formal ruling or judgment but marks judicial agreement — an acknowledgment that the point stood as argued. In practice, it appears parenthetically or as a concluding notation following a legal argument, signaling to subsequent readers that the court did not dispute or override the position advanced.
Common Confusion
This phrase is sometimes loosely conflated with terms of formal judicial action — such as an order, ruling, or decree. It is not any of these. Quod fuit concessum records the reporter's observation that the court conceded a point; it does not constitute a binding judicial act. The concession noted may reflect a court's passing agreement rather than deliberate holding, and it should not be read as precedent in the same sense as a ratio decidendi. Researchers should also distinguish it from quod erat demonstrandum (that which was to be demonstrated), a phrase from logical and mathematical discourse that appears in some legal writing with a different function entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English and American case reports will encounter this phrase as a term of art specific to the reporter tradition, not to statute or formal court procedure. Its significance is navigational: when you see quod fuit concessum in a historical report, it tells you that the court's agreement was either unremarkable enough to need no elaboration or that the reporter considered the concession settled enough to note without analysis. That distinction matters — the phrase can obscure whether a point was carefully considered or simply passed without objection.
In the older nominative reports (pre-standardized law reporting), Latin notations like this carried substantial weight as shorthand for the texture of proceedings. A modern reader consulting a 17th or 18th-century English report who misses this phrase may misread the passage as ambiguous where the reporter intended to convey clear judicial assent.
Be alert to the phrase appearing mid-discussion in Black's 1st edition entries, where it is used editorially alongside related Latin maxims — not always as a standalone defined term. Researchers should distinguish uses of the phrase in Black's that are definitional from uses that are merely illustrative in adjacent maxim discussions.
The phrase has no continuing vitality in modern American or English legal writing. Its relevance is confined to historical source reading, particularly English common law reports and treatises from the 16th through 19th centuries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's 1st and 2nd editions are in agreement on the core definition: "which was granted," signifying that an argument or point was conceded or acquiesced in by the court. Neither edition elaborates on procedural mechanics or attempts a contextual example. The 1st edition entry is notably truncated by an adjacent maxim entry, suggesting the compilers treated the phrase as self-explanatory to a trained reader.
Burrill's Law Dictionary identifies the phrase as one of frequent use — a characterization that situates it firmly within the active vocabulary of legal reporting, not merely as a curiosity. Burrill's entry, though incomplete in the source material available, reinforces that the phrase was a standard reportorial convention, not a rare or technical term of art requiring special definition.
None of the historical dictionaries address the phrase's relationship to formal judicial holdings or explain the evidentiary weight, if any, that a quod fuit concessum notation carried in subsequent proceedings. That silence is itself instructive: the phrase was a reporter's convention, not a legal standard, and the historical dictionaries treat it accordingly.