Definition
A Latin maxim of the civil law meaning "to hold a thing ratified" — that is, to confirm, affirm, or treat a prior act as valid and binding. The phrase captures the legal effect of ratification: the principal's subsequent acknowledgment transforms an act that was unauthorized, conditional, or merely provisional into one that is fully endorsed and legally operative. The term appears in discussions of agency, suretyship, and contractual confirmation in the Roman civil law tradition and passed into learned legal writing through the Digest.
---
Common Language
This is pure Latin legal terminology with no counterpart in ordinary modern English. The COMMON LANGUAGE section does not apply.
---
Common Confusion
RATAM REM HABERE describes the act or effect of ratification — the holding of a thing as confirmed. It should not be confused with RATIHABITIO, the noun form denoting the ratification itself as a juridical act. Where RATIHABITIO names the transaction, RATAM REM HABERE describes the legal posture adopted — to treat and hold the matter as ratified. The two terms are closely related and often appear together in civil law sources, but the distinction matters in research because treatises and digests do not use them interchangeably.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase functions primarily as a doctrinal shorthand in civil law and early common law treatises. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in:
— Historical treatises on agency and principal-agent relations, where the concept of ratification is traced to Roman law origins and the maxim is quoted to anchor the English doctrine in civilian authority.
— Suretyship literature, consistent with its location in the Digest at title 46.8 (on sureties and sponsors), where confirming a guarantee after the fact had significant legal consequences.
— General contract and obligation scholarship from the 17th through 19th centuries, when citation to the Digest was still standard practice in learned legal argument.
The key navigational point: when researching the historical foundations of ratification doctrine in common law sources, this phrase may appear without translation or gloss in older English and American treatises. A researcher unfamiliar with it may misread the surrounding argument or fail to recognize that the author is invoking a specific civil law rule rather than speaking generally. The phrase is a signal that the author is working within a civilian analytical frame, even if the surrounding text is otherwise in English and addressed to a common law audience.
Because the phrase is drawn from Justinian's Digest rather than from any domestic statute or case, it does not have a discrete doctrinal evolution within American or English law — but it anchors the broader concept of RATIFICATION, which does have extensive common law development. Researchers tracing ratification doctrine backward should expect this Latin formulation to appear at the point where common law writers invoke Roman law as a legitimizing source.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill — are in complete agreement. All three translate the phrase identically as "to hold a thing ratified; to ratify or confirm it," and all three cite Digest 46.8.12.1 as the authoritative source.
Burrill adds a modest but useful gloss, parenthetically equating the concept with the Latin verbs COMPROBARE (to approve, sanction) and AGNOSCERE (to acknowledge, recognize). This supplement is editorially valuable because it reflects how Roman jurists conceptualized the mental and volitional element of ratification — not merely a formal act but an act of acknowledgment and approval. Black's omits this nuance. Neither Black's edition nor Burrill develops the phrase beyond the single-sentence definition, reflecting the consensus that this is a term of known civilian art requiring identification rather than extended explanation.
No source places the phrase in tension with common law doctrine, and none addresses how the concept was received or modified in English equity or American courts. That gap in the historical dictionaries is itself informative: by the time these editions were compiled, the Latin phrase had largely been displaced in practical legal writing by the English term RATIFICATION, and the maxim survived primarily as a citation anchor and learned ornament.
---