Definition
A Latin maxim of comparative jurisprudence, appearing in full as: *Quod in jure scripto "jus" appellatur, id in lege Anglis "rectum" esse dicitur* — "What in the civil law is called 'jus,' in the law of England is said to be 'rectum' (right)." The phrase signals a terminological equivalence between the Roman civil law concept of *jus* (law, right, or legal entitlement) and the Anglo-Norman term *rectum* (right, in the sense of what is due or legally correct) used in the English common law tradition.
The maxim is not a rule of decision but a key of translation — a bridge term explaining that Roman and English legal systems use different words to describe the same foundational concept: a legally recognized entitlement or claim. Understanding the maxim requires holding both systems in view simultaneously. In the civil law, *jus* carries broad meaning encompassing both objective law (the legal order) and subjective right (a party's entitlement). In the English tradition, *rectum* performed parallel work, particularly in early writs and pleading formulae where a plaintiff sought to have his "right" declared.
A secondary maxim appearing in the same Black's entry — *Quod in minori valet valebit in majori; et quod in majori non valet nec valebit in minori* — is a distinct logical proposition: "That which is valid in the less shall be valid in the greater; and that which is not valid in the greater shall not be valid in the less." Though grouped together in the source, this is a separate maxim of legal reasoning and should not be conflated with the terminological equivalence stated in the primary phrase.
---
Common Confusion
The phrase is frequently encountered mid-citation in Coke's *Institutes* and Fleta without the surrounding context needed to understand its function. Researchers sometimes read it as a substantive rule about the scope of rights when it is in fact a glossary note — a translator's observation about vocabulary, not a holding about legal doctrine. The secondary maxim (*quod in minori valet*) appears immediately after in Black's entry and concerns a wholly different principle (the logic of lesser-to-greater validity), but their proximity in the text creates a risk of reading them as a single compound proposition.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This maxim is primarily an interpretive tool for reading early English legal texts alongside civil law sources. Its practical significance lies in three areas:
First, it explains terminological divergence in comparative treatises. Researchers working in Bracton, Glanvill, or Fleta — texts written in Latin and drawing heavily on Roman law — will encounter *jus* used in ways that do not map neatly onto later English common law vocabulary. This maxim is the explicit acknowledgment, by English jurists themselves, that the traditions used different words for equivalent concepts.
Second, it marks a moment of conscious legal translation. Coke's citation of this phrase in *Littleton* (*Co. Litt. 260*) reflects the early modern effort to reconcile received Roman categories with the native vocabulary of the common law. For historians of legal thought, this is evidence of how English lawyers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries understood the relationship between the two systems — not as identical, but as mapping onto each other at key points.
Third, the maxim signals the limits of direct translation. The equivalence it asserts is approximate, not perfect. *Jus* in the civil law carried a dual meaning (law as system; right as entitlement) that *rectum* in the English context did not fully replicate. Researchers relying on this maxim as a precise equivalence will overshoot; it is better read as a pragmatic glossary note than as a claim of conceptual identity.
Researchers using Law Mind's corpus should be alert to entries under *jus*, *rectum*, and *right* in historical dictionaries, where the definitional histories of these terms will trace the same comparison from different angles.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) presents the maxim in its full Latin form with an English translation and cites Coke on Littleton (*Co. Litt. 260*) and Fleta (*lib. 6, c. 1, § 1*) as authority. These are the canonical sources for the phrase in the English legal tradition.
The Black's entry does not elaborate on the significance of the equivalence or its limits — it presents the maxim as a straightforward terminological note. What the entry does not capture is the broader jurisprudential context: the phrase appears in Coke at a moment when the common law was actively defining itself against, and in relation to, Roman law. The citation to Fleta is useful because Fleta is itself a late thirteenth-century treatise heavily influenced by Bracton and written in the civilian mode, making the maxim's appearance there doubly appropriate as a site of terminological negotiation.
No entry for this maxim appears to exist in earlier English law dictionaries at the level of dedicated treatment. It is primarily transmitted through the Coke citation and repeated in Latin maxim collections of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries without substantial elaboration.
The secondary maxim (*quod in minori valet*) is a standard logical rule of legal construction appearing across numerous maxim collections and merits separate treatment in any full analysis.
---
Jurisdictional Note
This is a maxim of general common law heritage with no active jurisdictional variation. Its relevance today is confined to legal history, comparative law, and the interpretation of early English and mixed civil-common law texts. It has no operative procedural or substantive effect in any modern jurisdiction.
---