Definition
Latin: "So it is subscribed." A formal attestation phrase appearing at the end of a deposition or other sworn statement, placed immediately before the witness's or deponent's signature. The phrase served as a certification that the document had been duly signed, functioning as part of the authenticating apparatus of the completed instrument. It is a term of Scottish legal practice.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Scottish legal procedure and in historical English records that drew on Scottish practice. Researchers encountering it in transcripts of state trials, depositions, or Scottish court documents should recognize it as a formulaic closing attestation — not substantive legal language — signaling that what follows is the authenticating signature.
The primary corpus reference for this phrase in the historical dictionaries is 1 How. State Tr. 1379, meaning Howell's State Trials, a major compilation of English and British state trial records. Researchers working with that collection should understand that sic subscribitur marks the transition from the body of a deposition to the formal signature block. It carries no independent legal weight beyond that structural role; its significance is procedural and documentary.
Because the phrase belongs to Scottish rather than English common law procedure, it will appear more frequently in sources dealing with Scottish courts, Scottish witnesses examined before English tribunals, or mixed Anglo-Scottish proceedings — particularly those from the 17th and 18th centuries when such cross-border examinations were common in state trials. Researchers should not expect to find the phrase operative in purely English common law depositions, which used different closing formulas.
The term is now largely obsolete in active practice. Its appearance in a document is itself a dating signal: sic subscribitur in its formulaic use reflects pre-modern Scottish notarial and judicial procedure. Modern Scottish civil procedure does not employ this Latin tag.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — are in precise agreement. Each defines the term identically as "So it is subscribed," identifies it as a term of Scottish practice, describes its function as formal words at the end of depositions immediately preceding the signature, and cites the same single authority: 1 How. State Tr. 1379. The uniformity across sources confirms this is a narrow, well-settled technical term with a single fixed meaning and limited documentary footprint.
None of the historical dictionaries expand beyond this minimal treatment, which is itself instructive: the term generated no doctrinal controversy, no competing definitions, and no jurisdictional variation worth noting. It was a scribal and procedural formula, not a legal concept with interpretive depth.
Researchers should note that Black's (1st and 2nd ed.) entries for sic subscribitur appear in close typographic proximity to the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas — a substantively important common law principle. These are entirely separate entries. The proximity is alphabetical accident, not conceptual relationship.