Definition
Latin phrase meaning "according to the rule" or "by rule." Used in legal writing and pleading to indicate that a thing is done, decided, or proceeding in conformity with an established rule, principle, or legal standard. The phrase functions as a qualifier — signaling that whatever precedes or follows it is governed by or consistent with a recognized rule of law rather than by discretion, exception, or equity.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter *secundum regulam* most often in older common law pleadings, legal maxims collections, and equity treatises, where Latin tags were used as shorthand to signal the procedural or doctrinal footing of an argument. Its principal research value is diagnostic: when a historical source uses *secundum regulam*, it is flagging that the matter at hand follows strict legal rule as opposed to equitable discretion or exception. This distinction matters because common law courts and courts of equity operated on different principles — equity could depart from strict rule where conscience required; common law courts were bound *secundum regulam*.
The phrase also appears in older treatises on pleading and practice as a gloss on procedural correctness. A pleading filed or a judgment rendered *secundum regulam* was one that hewed to formal requirements. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century American or English legal materials should recognize the phrase as a signal of formalism, not as a substantive term of art with doctrinal weight of its own.
In corpus searches, the phrase will cluster around maxims literature, Latin legal dictionaries, and treatises on civil and common law procedure. It is less likely to appear in American statutory materials or modern case law, where Latin phrases of this kind have been largely displaced by plain-English equivalents. If encountered in a modern brief or opinion, it is almost certainly a deliberate archaism or scholarly citation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary gives the definition concisely as "according to rule; by rule." The entry is minimal — characteristic of how Black's treats Latin phrases that function as modifiers rather than as freestanding doctrinal terms. The dictionary does not expand on context or usage, which reflects the phrase's role as a general qualifier rather than a term with a fixed legal test or procedural procedure attached to it.
The phrase belongs to a family of Latin legal locutions that include *secundum allegata et probata* (according to what is alleged and proved) and *secundum leges* (according to the laws), all of which signal conformity with a standard. Historical legal dictionaries and maxims collections — including Bouvier's Law Dictionary and Broom's Legal Maxims — treat these phrases as part of the inherited vocabulary of learned legal argument, useful for precision in pleading and advocacy but not themselves creating rights or obligations.
What historical sources largely miss is any practical guidance on how courts received or weighed such phrases. The phrase was rhetorical as much as technical — invoking the authority of rule over discretion — and its force depended heavily on context and the particular rule being invoked.