Definition
Latin maxim meaning "according to the rule of law" or "by the intendment and rule of law." The phrase functions as a shorthand declaration that a particular act, judgment, interpretation, or construction proceeds in strict conformity with established legal rules, as opposed to equity, discretion, or custom. It signals that the matter at hand is governed by law's formal demands rather than by a court's latitude to depart from them.
Common Confusion
SECUNDUM NORMAM LEGIS vs. SECUNDUM LEGEM vs. EX LEGE: These three phrases are often treated as interchangeable in secondary literature but carry slightly different emphases. SECUNDUM NORMAM LEGIS stresses conformity to the norm or rule of law — the process of following law's standard. SECUNDUM LEGEM means simply "according to law" and is the most compressed form. EX LEGE means "by operation of law" and emphasizes that a legal consequence follows automatically from a legal rule, without further act. When reading older texts, the choice among these phrases is often deliberate and reflects the author's rhetorical purpose.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a maxim of interpretive posture, not a substantive rule. Researchers encountering it in older opinions, pleadings, or treatises should treat it as a signal that the author is asserting strict-law reasoning — often in deliberate contrast to an equitable argument on the other side. The phrase appears most frequently in contexts where a party or judge is insisting that a question must be resolved by legal rule rather than judicial discretion.
The phrase is closely associated with Bacon's use in argument. Burrill cites Bacon's argument in Low's Case (Works, iv. 234), and researchers working with early English legal literature will find the maxim deployed in precisely that tradition of learned legal argument where Latin maxims carried rhetorical and structural weight. By the mid-nineteenth century, American legal writing largely abandoned Latin maxims of this type in favor of English equivalents, so the phrase appears almost exclusively in older materials and in treatises that preserved the classical style.
Researchers should be alert to the following navigational points:
First, the phrase does not appear in modern judicial opinions with any regularity. If you encounter it in a modern document, it is almost certainly a quotation from or reference to an older source.
Second, it is easily confused with related maxims that sound similar but carry distinct meanings — particularly SECUNDUM LEGEM, which is a compressed variant, and EX LEGE, which also means "by operation of law" but emphasizes legal consequence rather than legal conformity. See COMMON CONFUSION below.
Third, because the phrase appears in Burrill with a truncated entry (the original text cuts off at "SECUNDUM SUBJECTAM MATE-," indicating the next entry was SECUNDUM SUBJECTAM MATERIAM), researchers using digitized versions of Burrill should verify they are reading complete entries and not truncated OCR outputs.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence are in agreement on the core translation: "according to the rule of law; by the rule of law." Burrill adds the gloss "by the intendment and rule of law," which is the more precise formulation. The word "intendment" is significant: it signals that the phrase covers not only explicit statutory or common law rules but also the law's constructive or implied meaning — what the law intends as well as what it expressly provides.
None of the historical dictionaries provide extended doctrinal discussion, which is consistent with the phrase's function as a maxim rather than a term of art with substantive legal content. Historical sources treat it as self-explanatory to a reader trained in Latin legal vocabulary. Modern researchers without that background should understand that the phrase carries no independent legal force — it is rhetorical and structural shorthand.
The Bacon citation in Burrill (Works, iv. 234) anchors the phrase in the English common law tradition and is worth consulting for researchers tracing the intellectual history of strict-law versus equity reasoning.