SECUNDUM - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

SECUNDUMAuthored

The Law Mind • 880 words

Definition

A Latin preposition meaning "according to" or "following." In legal contexts, secundum functions as a connective term in Latin maxims and procedural phrases, signaling that a rule, judgment, or action must conform to a specified standard, document, custom, or principle. It does not stand alone as a substantive legal concept but appears as the operative word in a family of Latin phrases that carry independent legal meaning.

Common phrases built on secundum include:

Secundum allegata et probata — according to the allegations and the proofs. A foundational principle of adjudication holding that a court's judgment must be confined to what was pleaded and what was proven at trial. Neither party may be bound by findings outside the issues raised.

Secundum æquum et bonum — according to what is just and good. An equity-inflected standard directing resolution by principles of fairness rather than strict legal rule.

Secundum bonos mores — according to good usages or established custom. Refers to conformity with accepted social and legal custom, particularly in the civil law tradition.

Secundum artem — according to the art or craft; according to the rules of a trade or profession. Appears in contexts requiring professional or technical standards of conduct.

Secundum consuetudinem manerii — according to the custom of the manor. Relevant in feudal tenure and copyhold disputes where local manorial custom governed rights and obligations.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "according to."

Historical common usage: Not independently recorded in Webster's 1913 as an English word; treated as a Latin term.

The gap here is not between common and legal meaning — both carry the same sense of "according to." The significance for researchers is that secundum in legal sources almost never appears alone. Its meaning is inseparable from the phrase it introduces, and those phrases carry technical legal weight that the bare English translation does not convey.

Common Confusion

Secundum is sometimes encountered by researchers unfamiliar with Latin legal usage who read it as a citation shorthand or a proper noun (as in the legal encyclopedia Corpus Juris Secundum, abbreviated C.J.S., where secundum means "second" in the series sense). That usage is taxonomic, not doctrinal. The preposition secundum in Latin maxims is a distinct and older usage. Do not conflate an appearance of secundum in a case citation or encyclopedia reference with its appearance in a doctrinal Latin phrase.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encounter secundum primarily in two situations: reading older case law or treatises that deploy Latin maxims without translation, and tracing the doctrinal meaning of specific phrases. The term itself is a pointer — what matters is the phrase it anchors.

Secundum allegata et probata is the most litigation-critical of the family and appears frequently in common law appellate opinions through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. Courts invoke it to police variance between pleading and proof, and its presence in a case often signals a dispositive procedural holding. Researchers working in pleading history, variance doctrine, or the development of notice pleading under the Federal Rules should treat every appearance of this phrase as a doctrinal marker.

Secundum æquum et bonum surfaces more often in civil law jurisdictions and in equity courts. Researchers using English equity reports or Scottish and Louisiana sources will encounter it in contexts where the court signals a departure from strict common law rule toward equitable discretion.

Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S.) uses secundum in its title to mean "second" — signaling it as a successor to Corpus Juris — and is a distinct matter from the doctrinal Latin phrases. Researchers should not expect the encyclopedia's entries under a topic to address the Latin maxim of the same root phrase without explicit cross-referencing.

In historical sources, secundum phrases often appear without translation and without citation to authority. Burrill and Black both record them as settled Latin legal vocabulary. Researchers should treat them as terms of art requiring contextual interpretation, not bare translation.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries agree on the core meaning — "according to" — and agree that secundum anchors a recognized family of Latin legal maxims. Black's first edition and Burrill both record secundum bonos mores and secundum æquum et bonum. Anderson adds secundum allegata et probata and secundum artem, reflecting the broader practical vocabulary of pleading and professional standards.

Burrill is the most expansive, including secundum quantitatem terrae (according to the quantity of land) and secundum consuetudinem husbandriæ manerii, reflecting its attention to feudal tenure contexts. These latter phrases are narrower in application and appear primarily in land law and copyhold disputes; modern researchers in common law property history will encounter them in Year Book materials and early Chancery records.

What the historical dictionaries collectively underemphasize is the procedural centrality of secundum allegata et probata as a working rule of adjudication — they treat it as a phrase to be defined rather than a principle to be applied. Anderson comes closest to capturing its doctrinal weight by cross-referencing to allegata and probata as independent entries. Researchers should pursue those cross-references.

SECUNDUMmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

Lat. In the civil and common law. According to. Secundum bonos mores, according to good usages; ac- cording to established custom; regularly; orderly. Calvin. SECUNDUM ÆQUUM ET BONUM. According to what is just and right.

SECUNDUMmain

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

Secta cst pugna civilis; sicut actores armantur actionibus, et, quasi, gladiis accinguntur, ita rei muniuntur exceptionibus, et defenduntur, quasi, clypeis. Hob. 20. A suit is a civil warfare; for as the plaintiffs are armed with actions, and, as it were, girded with swords, so the defendants are fortified with pleas, and are defended, as it were, by shields. Secta que scripto nititur a scripto variari non debet. Jenk. Cent. 65. A suit which is based upon a writing ought not to vary from'the writing. _ SECTATORES. Suitors of court who, among the Saxons, gave their judgment or verdict in civil suits upon the matter of fact and law. 1 Reeve, Eng. Law, 22. . a SECTION. In text-books, codes, statutes, and other juridical writings, the smallest distinct and numbered subdivisions are commonly called “sections,” sometimes “arti. eles,” and occasionally “paragraphs.” SECTION OF LAND. In American land law. <A division or’ parcel of land, on the government survey, comprising one square mile or 640 acres. Each “township” (six miles square) is divided by straight lines into thirty-six sections, and these are again divided into half-sections and quarter-seetions. ; - The genera] and proper acceptation of the terms “section,” “half,” and “quarter section,” as well as their construction by the genera land department, denotes the land in the sectional and subdivisional lines, and not the exact quantity which a perfect admeasurement of an unobstructed surface would declare. Brown v. Hardin, 21 Ark. 827. . ' SECTIS NON FACIENDIS. A writ which lay for a dowress, or one in wardship, to be free from suit of court. Cowell. Lat. In the civil and common law. According to. Occurring in many phrases of familiar use, as follows: —Secundum wsquum et bonum. According to what is just.and right—Secundum alle- gata et probata. According to what is alleged and proved; according to the allegations and proofs. 15 East, 81; Cloutman vy. Tunison, 1 Sumn. 375, Fed. Cas. No. 2,907.—Secundum artem. According to the art, trade, business, or science.—Seocundum bonos mores. According to good usages; according to established custom; regularly; orderly.—Secundum consuctu om manerii, ccording to the custom of the manor.—Secundum formam charts. According to the form of the charter, (deed.)—Secunmdum formam doni. According to the form of the gift or grant. See ForMEDON.—Secundum formam statuti. Ac cording to the form of the statute —Secundum em communem. According to the common law.—Secundum normam i According to the rule of law; by the intendment and rule of law.—Secundum regulam. According to the rule; by rule.—Secundum subjecmateriam. According to the subjectmatter. 1 Bl. Comm. 229. All agreements must be construed secundum subjectam matertam if the matter will bear it. 2 Mod. 80, arg. Secundum naturam est commoda cujusque rei eum sequi, quem sequuntur incommoda. It is according ‘to nature that the advantages of anything should attach to him to whom the disadvantages attach. Dig. 50, 17, 10.

SECUNDUMmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

L. Following; according to. Secundum allegata et probata. According to allegations and proofs. See ALLEGARE, Allegata, etc. Secundum artem. According to the

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Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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according to

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