TRESVIRI - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TRESVIRIAuthored

The Law Mind • 712 words

Definition

Tresviri (singular: triumvir) is a Latin term from Roman law referring to a board of three officials (literally, "three men") appointed to carry out specific governmental or administrative functions. In legal usage, the term most commonly designates the tresviri capitales — magistrates responsible for overseeing prisons, supervising the execution of condemned criminals, and maintaining public order in Rome. The office was collegial in character, meaning authority was distributed across three holders acting jointly rather than vested in a single magistrate.

The term appears in legal dictionaries principally as a historical reference point for understanding Roman administrative and penal structure, rather than as a concept with direct application in modern common law systems.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Tresviri capitales: The most legally significant subtype in the dictionary tradition. These were minor magistrates — part of the vigintisexviri (the board of twenty-six junior magistrates) — who held responsibility for criminal enforcement, custody of prisoners awaiting execution, and the supervision of capital punishment. They are the officers referenced in Black's and Burrill's entries.

Tresviri monetales: A separate board of three officials responsible for overseeing the mint and coinage. Relevant to Roman monetary law but rarely cited in common law legal dictionaries.

Tresviri agris dandis adsignandis: Commissioners appointed for the purpose of distributing and assigning public land, appearing in the context of Roman agrarian law.

Why It Matters in Research

This term is nearly exclusively a Roman law artifact. Researchers encountering tresviri in legal sources should recognize several important navigational points.

First, the term appears almost entirely in works of Roman law scholarship and in the early editions of English-language legal dictionaries that carried heavy Roman law appendages — Black's 1st edition being the primary example. Researchers working in common law sources after the mid-nineteenth century will rarely encounter it except in historical or comparative legal analysis.

Second, the 2nd edition entry reproduced in the source material under this term is clearly a misprint or misattribution — the text quoted is the definition for continuing trespass and permanent trespass, not tresviri. This is a concrete example of the indexing and printing errors that appear in historical legal dictionaries and that can mislead researchers who rely on them uncritically. When working with early dictionary editions, always cross-check unusual or truncated entries against multiple sources.

Third, for researchers studying Roman penal administration, administrative law, or the history of executive power, the tresviri capitales are a useful index entry: they represent one of the earliest recorded models of a delegated, collegial enforcement magistracy — an institutional structure with long influence on later European administrative law. Burrill's reference to Calvin's Lexicon Juridicum (Calvinus, Lexicon Juridicum Juris Caesarei, 1612) is the key primary dictionary source; researchers needing depth on Roman magistracies should consult that work directly rather than relying on the compressed entries in English-language dictionaries.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's 1st edition and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in direct agreement on the core definition, and both cite Calvin's Lexicon Juridicum as their authority — indicating that both entries derive from the same underlying source rather than independent verification. Neither entry distinguishes among the various types of tresviri, defaulting to the tresviri capitales as the legally salient subtype. This is editorially defensible given the penal focus of legal dictionaries, but researchers should be aware that the Roman tresviri encompassed a broader administrative category.

The Black's 2nd edition entry, as noted above, contains text that clearly belongs to the trespass entry — a production error with no bearing on the actual definition of tresviri. This underscores a broader caution: the 2nd edition, while valuable, was produced under significant editorial pressure and contains occasional structural anomalies.

No historical dictionary entry in this corpus addresses the tresviri in the context of Roman agrarian law or monetary administration, reflecting the criminal-law orientation of common law dictionary compilers.

Jurisdictional Note

Tresviri has no operative meaning in any modern common law jurisdiction. It functions solely as a Roman law term of art and appears in modern legal writing only in comparative law, legal history, and classical scholarship contexts.

TRESVIRImain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

Lat. In Roman law. Offi- cers who had the charge of prisons, and the execution of condemned criminals. Calvin.

TRESVIRImain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

to his person, property, or rights, by the immediate force and violence of the defendant. —Continuing trespass. One which does not consist of a single isolated act but is in its nature a permanent invasion of the rights of. another; as, where.a person builds on his own land so that a part of the building overhangs his neighbor's land—Permanent trespass. One which consistg of a series of acts, done on successive days, which are of the same nature, and are renewed or continued from day to day, so that, in the aggregate, they mers up one indivisible wrong. 3 Bl. Comm. 212.—' spass de bonis asportatis. (Trespass for goods catried away.) In practice. The technical name of that species of action of trespass for injuries to personal property which lies where the injury consists in ape pai away the goods or property. See 3 Bl. Comm. 150, 151.—Trespass for mesne profits. <A form of action supplemental to an action of ejectment, brought against the tenant in possession to recover the profits which he has wrongfull received during the time of his occupation. Bl. Comm. 205.—Trespass on the case. -The form of action, at common law, adapted to the recovery of damages for some injury resulting to a party from the wrongful act of another, unaccompanied by direct or immediate force, or which is the indirect or secondary consequence of such act. Commonly called, by abbreviation, “Case.” See Munal v. Brown (C. C.)-70 Fed. 968; Nolan v. Railroad Co., 70 Conn. 159, 39 Atl. 115, 438 L. R. A. 306; Christian v. Mills, 2 Walk. (Pa.) 181.—-Trespass quare clausum fregit. ‘Trespass wherefore he broke the close.” The commonlaw action for damages for an unlawful entry or trespass upon the plaintiff's land. In the Latin form of the writ, the defendant was call-: ed upon to show why he broke the plaintiff's close; ¢. e., the real or imaginary structure inclosing the land, whence the name. It ie commonly abbreviated to “trespass q* cl. fr." See Kimball] v. Hilton, 92 Me. 214, 42 Atl. 394. —Trespass to try title. The name of the action used in several of the states for the ‘recovery of the possession of real property, with damages for any trespass committed upon the same by the defendant.—Trespass vi et armis. Trespass with force and arms. The commonlaw action for damages for any injury committed by the defendant with direct and immediate force or violence against the plaintiff ¢ ‘his property. " TRESPASSER. One who has committed trespass; one who unlawfully enters or in-. trudes upon another’s land, or unlawfully and forcibly takes another’s personal property. —Joint trespassers. Two or more who unite in committing a trespass. Kansas City v. File, 60 Kan. 157, 55 Pac. S717; Bonte v. Postel, 109 Ky. 64, 58 S. W. 536. 51 L. R. A. 187 Trespasser ab initio. Trespasser from the beginning. A term applied to a tort-feasor whose acts relate back so as to make a previous act. at the time innocent, unlawful; as, if he enter peaceably, and subsequently commit a breach of the peace, his entry is considered a _ trespass. Stim. Gloss. See Wright v. Marvin, 59 Vt. 437, 9 Atl. 601. Lat. In Roman law. Officers who had the charge of prisons, and the execution of condemned criminals. Calvin.

TRESVIRImain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

Lat. In the Roman law. Officers who had the charge of prisons, and the execution of condemned criminals. Calv. Lex.

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