Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "the court sitting" or "during the sitting of the court." Used in legal records and proceedings to indicate that a particular act, ruling, or event occurred while the court was formally in session. Functionally, it is a temporal and procedural marker — distinguishing actions taken during an active session from those occurring outside of court or between terms.
Why It Matters in Research
SEDENTE CURIA appears most frequently in older court records, reports, and Latin-form pleadings, particularly in English and Scottish legal materials predating the plain-language reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Researchers working in historical case reports, chancery records, or early American legal materials derived from English practice may encounter this phrase as a parenthetical or introductory notation signaling when a ruling or order was made.
The phrase carries procedural weight: an act done sedente curia is distinguished from acts done in chambers, between terms, or by a judge acting in a non-judicial capacity. This distinction mattered historically for questions of record authenticity, the validity of orders, and whether an act was subject to formal correction or revision. Where a record notes that something occurred sedente curia, it is effectively certifying that the court was properly constituted and in formal session at that moment.
Researchers should note that this phrase often appears in proximity to related Latin notations — such as INSTANTE CURIA (the court pressing or urging) or in Scottish materials near references to ACTS OF SEDERUNT — and can be overlooked as mere ornamental Latin when it is in fact a procedural marker with substantive implications for the timing and validity of judicial acts.
In Scottish legal records, awareness of SEDENTE CURIA is particularly useful because it appears alongside references to the Court of Session's sitting periods, which were historically divided into terms. Understanding whether an act occurred within or outside a sitting term could affect the legal force of that act under Scots procedural law.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement, reflecting the phrase's narrow and stable meaning. All three define it consistently as "the court sitting" or "during the sitting of the court." Black's (1st ed.) introduces a small textual anomaly — the entry runs into apparent OCR or typesetting corruption, inserting "sion, solicitation, promises, bribes, or other" before completing the definition — which does not affect the meaning but illustrates the care required when reading digitized historical dictionary sources. Black's (2nd ed.) presents the cleanest version. Burrill adds the "L. Lat." prefix, correctly identifying the phrase as Law Latin (a technical legal Latin distinct from classical Latin), which is a useful reminder that such terms often have no direct classical source and should be searched in legal rather than general Latin references.
All three dictionaries immediately follow the SEDENTE CURIA entry with a reference to ACTS OF SEDERUNT in Scots law, suggesting editorial recognition that the two concepts share a conceptual and terminological relationship. SEDERUNT itself is derived from the Latin "sederunt" (they sat), and Acts of Sederunt are formal procedural ordinances of the Scottish Court of Session. The juxtaposition in the historical dictionaries is not coincidental — researchers working in Scottish legal history should treat these as companion entries.
The historical dictionaries do not address the procedural consequences of the distinction between acts taken sedente curia and those taken otherwise, leaving the researcher to consult period treatises and court records directly for that analysis.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is encountered most often in English and Scottish historical legal materials. In American legal research, it appears primarily in older state court records and reports that followed English or colonial-era Latin conventions. Modern American courts do not use the phrase in practice, but it may appear in historical materials being researched for chain-of-title, probate, or jurisdictional history purposes.