Definition
To statute is an archaic verbal phrase from old Scots law meaning to establish, ordain, or formally enact by legal authority. It appears in the formulaic language of Scottish legal instruments and judicial decrees, typically as part of a tripartite recital of official action: "decerns, statutes and ordains." Each verb in that formula carried distinct weight — to decern was to adjudge, to statute was to establish as a rule or standing order, and to ordain was to command compliance. Together, the phrase operated as a comprehensive expression of judicial or sovereign authority.
The term is not used in modern legal writing. It survives only as a specimen of historical Scots legal drafting and is encountered almost exclusively in transcripts of old Scottish court proceedings, parliamentary records, and formal instruments of state.
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Common Confusion
"To statute" should not be confused with the noun "statute," meaning a written law enacted by a legislature. The verbal form — to statute, meaning to establish or enact — dropped out of legal usage entirely, while the noun form became one of the most fundamental terms in all of law. A researcher encountering "statutes and ordains" in a historical Scottish source is reading a verb, not a reference to a body of enacted law.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early Scottish legal records, state trials, or reprinted collections of Scots law proceedings will encounter this phrase embedded in formal decree language. The risk is misreading "statutes" as a noun — interpreting the passage as referring to existing legislation — when it is functioning as a verb meaning "establishes." This misreading can distort the meaning of a decree entirely.
The phrase "decerns, statutes and ordains" is a fixed formula. When you see it, recognize the whole unit as a stylized recital of judicial authority, not a reference to any external statutory text. The word "statutes" in this construction is grammatically parallel to "decerns" and "ordains," not a standalone substantive term.
This verbal usage also illustrates a broader pattern in early legal Latin and its vernacular descendants: many terms that survive today only as nouns — statute, order, record — once had active verbal lives in formal legal instruments. Awareness of this pattern sharpens reading of pre-modern legal texts across multiple jurisdictions, not only Scotland.
The Burrill citation to 1 How. St. Trials 1381 is a reference to Howell's State Trials, a published collection of English and British state proceedings. That volume set is a real and frequently digitized source, making this citation verifiable in major law library collections and online.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is brief but precise. Burrill correctly identifies the term as belonging to old Scots law, defines it as "to establish," and anchors the usage with a direct quotation from Howell's State Trials. No other major historical law dictionaries — not Black's, not Bouvier's, not Jacob's — appear to have carried a separate entry for this verbal form, likely because its currency was limited to Scottish practice and it had already faded from use by the time American and general English legal lexicography matured. Burrill's coverage of archaic Scots and civil law terms is one of the features that distinguishes his dictionary from contemporaries, and this entry is a minor example of that reach.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to historical Scots law. It has no recognized usage in English common law, American law, or modern Scottish law. Researchers in English legal history or American legal sources will not encounter it except in reprinted Scottish materials or comparative legal histories.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Statutes of Repose vs. Statutes of Limitation — Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia (civpro_133). Relevant for contextual background on how the noun "statute" functions in modern procedural law, which sharpens the contrast with this archaic verbal usage.
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