RANTO - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

RANTOAuthored

The Law Mind • 543 words

Definition

"Ranto" does not appear as a recognized legal term in the available historical or modern legal dictionaries, including Bouvier's Law Dictionary. The source material provided under this heading contains an entry for SCIRE FACIAS, not for "ranto," indicating either a cataloging error in the source index or a misattribution of dictionary content.

No independent legal meaning for "ranto" has been identified in English, American, civil law, or common law legal traditions. It does not appear as a term of art, a pleading form, a legal status, a property concept, or a procedural device in the available corpus.

Common Confusion

"Ranto" should not be assumed to carry legal meaning simply because it appears in a legal document or is returned by a legal corpus search. Index errors, OCR artifacts, and paleographic misreadings are common sources of phantom terms in digitized legal archives. Before treating any unfamiliar term as a genuine legal concept, researchers should verify it against at least two independent historical sources.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering "ranto" in a historical document, manuscript, or legal record should treat it with caution. Several possibilities warrant investigation:

First, the term may be a transcription error or paleographic misreading of another word. Historical legal documents, particularly those in secretary hand or early modern print, frequently produce apparent "terms" that are corruptions of recognizable words. Candidates worth checking against context include "rant" (a disturbance or disorder, occasionally used informally in older records), "ranto" as a possible variant spelling of a regional or obsolete term, or a misread version of a Latin phrase fragment.

Second, the source material provided here — the Bouvier's entry actually describing scire facias — suggests a database or index mismatch. If you are searching the Law Mind corpus and retrieving "ranto" as a headword, verify whether the underlying text has been correctly parsed. The content delivered belongs to the SCIRE FACIAS entry and concerns revival of judgment proceedings, further breaches on bonds, and mortgage procedure in Pennsylvania. That entry is worth consulting on its own terms.

Third, if "ranto" appears in a specific jurisdiction's records, local archival glossaries or dialect dictionaries may resolve it. Some regional legal terms, particularly from non-English legal traditions absorbed into American territorial law (Spanish, French, Dutch), survived in distorted forms in English-language records.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary, the sole source indexed here, contains no entry for "ranto." The content surfaced under this heading is an excerpt from Bouvier's treatment of scire facias, covering the procedural use of that writ to suggest further breaches on a bond after partial judgment, and its statutory adaptation in Pennsylvania mortgage proceedings. That content is accurately attributed to Bouvier and is substantively reliable for scire facias research, but it provides no support for any definition of "ranto."

No other historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — including Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's Law Dictionary, or Black's Law Dictionary — have been identified as containing this term.

RANTOmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

Scire facias is also used to suggest fur- ther breaches on a bond with a condition, where a judgment has been obtained for some but not all of the breaches and to re- cover further instalments where a judg- ment has been obtained for the penalty be- fore all the instalments are due; 1 Wms. Saund. 58, n. 1; 4 Md. 375. By statute, in Pennsylvania, scire facias is the method of proceeding upon a mort- gage. The pleadings in scire facias are peculiar. The writ recites the judgment or other record, and also the suggestions which the plaintiff must make to the court to entitle him to the proceeding by scire facias. The writ, therefore, presents the plaintiff's whole case, and constitutes the declaration, to which the defendant must plead; 1 Blackf. 297. And when the proceeding in used to forfeit a corporate charter, all the causes of forfeiture must be assigned in distinct breaches in the writ, as on a bond with a condition is done in the declaration or replication. And the defendant must either disclaim the charter or deny its ex- istence, or deny the facts alleged as breaches, or demur to them. The sugges tions in the writ, disclosing the foundation of the plaintiff's case, must also be traversed if they are to be avoided. The scire facias is founded partly upon them and partly upon the record; 2 Inst. 470. 679. They are substantive facts, and can be traversed by distinct pleas embracing them alone, just as any other fundamental allegation can be traversed alone. All the pleadings after the writ or declaration are in the or- dinary forms. There are no pleadings in scire facias to forfeit a corporate charter to be found in the books, as the proceeding has been seldom used. There is a case in 1 P. Wms. 207, but no pleadings. There is a case also in 9 Gill 379, with a synopsis of the pleadings. Perhaps the only other case is in Vermont; and it is without pleadings. A defendant cannot plead more than one plea to a scire facias to for- feit a corporate charter: the statutes of 4 & 5 Anne, ch. 16, and 9 Anne, ch. 20, al- lowing double pleas, do not extend to the crown; 1 Chitty, Pl. 479; 1 P. Wims. 220.