TRIARE

Definition

A Latin term from medieval English legal practice meaning "to try" or "to determine." Used by Bracton and other early common law writers to denote the formal adjudication of a legal action — roughly equivalent to the modern concept of trying a case before a court. In its broadest usage in the sources, triare is treated as synonymous with terminare (to terminate or determine), indicating that to try a matter was understood as bringing it to authoritative resolution. The term appears primarily in procedural and jurisdictional discussions, particularly in the context of distinguishing where different categories of actions — criminal versus civil, in rem versus in personam — were properly to be adjudicated.

Why It Matters in Research

Triare is encountered almost exclusively in Latin passages from medieval treatise literature, above all in Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. Researchers working with Bracton or with early English legal Latin should understand that triare carries a broad, institutional meaning: it does not yet carry the narrower procedural connotations that "trial" would acquire in later common law — specifically the idea of a formal evidentiary proceeding before a jury. When Bracton uses triare, he means something closer to "determined" or "adjudged" by the competent forum. The Burrill passage is instructive precisely because it pairs triare with terminare. This pairing reveals that the distinction between trying and concluding a matter — later a significant procedural distinction in English law — was not sharply drawn in the earliest common law sources. Researchers should not import modern trial-procedure assumptions when reading these passages. The term also appears in jurisdictional contexts: the quoted passage from Bracton asks where civil actions (actiones civiles), whether in rem or in personam, are properly to be tried — a question that connects directly to the development of the English court system and the separation of royal, feudal, and county jurisdictions. Researchers tracing the history of subject-matter jurisdiction or venue will encounter triare in exactly this kind of passage. Because triare is a Latin form with no direct English successor term, it will not appear in English-language legal sources after the medieval period. Its practical relevance is confined to reading Latin legal sources in the original, or to scholarship interpreting those sources.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill is the primary shelf-source for this term. His entry is terse but accurate: he identifies the Latin origin from the Law French trier, supplies the Bracton passage, and correctly notes the synonymy with terminare. The Bracton quotation Burrill reproduces (beginning "Dictum est superius, in cujus curia actiones criminales debeant terminari...") is drawn from the section of De Legibus concerned with the proper forum for civil actions — a passage that Bracton scholars will recognize as foundational to his treatment of jurisdiction. No other major historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus carry an independent entry for triare; the term is treated as a Latin form requiring glossing rather than as an English legal term requiring definition. Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's, and Bouvier's do not independently treat it. This reflects the term's status as a learned Latinsim rather than an operative term of art in the English common law tradition. Burrill's entry does not address the evolution from triare to the English "trial," nor does it situate the term in the broader development of common law procedure. That gap is significant for researchers: the conceptual continuity between the Latin triare and the later English trial is real but not straightforward, and Burrill should not be read as establishing that equivalence.

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