RENOVARE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

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The Law Mind • 669 words

Definition

Latin. "To renew." A term of old English law describing the act of renewal, most commonly encountered in the phrase *annuatim renovare* — to renew annually. The phrase was applied to profits or natural products of land that are harvested and then regenerate or are replenished, distinguishing them from resources that, once taken, are permanently exhausted.

The concept carried practical legal weight in the law of profits and of property: a thing that *renovatur* — that renews itself — was treated differently from a thing consumed once and gone. Annual crops, certain fisheries, and periodically cut timber were understood as renewable in this sense, affecting how courts evaluated the nature of grants, leases, and equitable interests in such resources.

Common Confusion

RENOVARE should not be confused with the broader category of renewal in contract law (such as renewal of a lease or debt instrument), which operates under distinct doctrines. The term's historical usage is narrow: it describes the self-renewing character of certain natural profits, not the legal act of extending or reconstituting a legal obligation. A researcher encountering *renovare* in an old equity or property text should resist reading it as a synonym for lease renewal or debt renewal.

Why It Matters in Research

This is a term almost exclusively encountered in historical equity and real property sources, particularly in cases involving profits à prendre, grants of natural produce, and the distinction between renewable and non-renewable profits from land. The annotated reference in Ambler's Reports (Ambl. 131) — cited by both Black's and Burrill — anchors the phrase *annuatim renovare* in eighteenth-century English equity practice. Researchers working in that corpus should note that the term does not appear prominently in later American common law, where the underlying distinctions migrated into the law of waste, timber rights, and natural resource leases under different vocabulary.

The chief research trap is encountering *renovare* in a Latin maxim or recital and misreading it as a general term of renewal applicable to any legal instrument. Its technical force was specific to profits and natural produce. If you are tracing American doctrine on renewable versus exhaustible natural resource rights, you may find the concept alive under different terminology — "emblements," "profits," "waste" — without the Latin label.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary agree on the core definition: *renovare* means "to renew," and the operative legal phrase is *annuatim renovare*, meaning annual renewal of profits taken from land. All three sources trace the phrase to the same equity authority (Ambl. 131), suggesting the corpus of English cases directly using this term is narrow. None of the historical dictionaries develops a broader doctrinal framework around *renovare*; it appears in each as a brief gloss, not a term of extensive legal elaboration.

Notably, the second edition of Black's does not give *renovare* its own standalone entry in the source material provided, while Burrill's offers the most complete contextual note — specifically that the phrase was "applied to profits which are taken and the product renewed again." This phrasing is useful for research because it identifies the functional legal criterion: the question was whether the profit-yielding thing regenerated after taking, not merely whether a grant or contract was periodically extended.

Historical dictionaries do not address *renovare* in the context of American law, reflecting the term's effective obsolescence outside of historical English equity. Researchers should not expect to find it in American digests or reporters except in direct quotation from English authority.

Jurisdictional Note

The term belongs to English equity and real property law and has no independent American doctrinal lineage. American courts addressing equivalent concepts — renewable natural profits, annual crops, periodically harvested resources — did so under domestic common law categories without preserving the Latin terminology.

RENOVAREmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

RENDER, v. In practice. To give up; to yield; to return; to surrender. also to pay or perform; used of rents, services, and the like. —Render judgment. To pronounce, state, declare, or announce the judgment of the court in a given case or on a given state of facts; not used with reference to judgments by confession, and not synonymous with “entering. “‘docketing,” or “recording” the judgment. he rendition of a judgment is the judicial act of the court in pronouncing the sentence of, the law, while the entry of a judgment is a ministerial act, which consists in spreading upon the record a statement of the final conclusion reached by the court in the matter, thus furnishing external and incontestable evidence of the sentence given ne designed to stand as a perpetual memorial of its action. See Schuster v. Rader, 13 Colo. 329, 22 Pac. 505; Farmers’ State Bank v. Bales, 64 Neb. 870, 90 N. W. 945; Fleet v. Youngs, 11 Wend. (N. Y.) 502: Schurtz v. Romer, 81 Cal. 244, 22 aa at Winstead v. Evans (Tex. Civ. App.) 33 580; Coe v. Erb, 59 Ohio St. Supt 52 N. - ‘E40 69 Am. St. Rep. 764. RENDER, n. In feudal ae “render” was used in connection with rents and herjots. Goods subject to rent or heriot-service were said to lie in render, when the lord might not only seize the identical goods, but might also distrain for them. Cowell. Lat. In old English law. To renew. Annuatim renovere, to renew annually. A phrase applied to profits which are taken and the product renewed again. Amb. 131.