TUM - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TUMAuthored

The Law Mind • 695 words

Definition

A Latin adverb meaning "then" — referring to a point in time previously specified or to a past period as distinguished from a later one. In legal Latin, tum functions as a temporal marker in maxims, pleadings, and doctrinal formulations to fix the moment at which a right, condition, or legal consequence attaches. It appears most often in paired constructions (tum... tum, meaning "both... and" or "at one time... at another") and in phrases contrasting a prior legal state with a subsequent one.

The term has no independent substantive legal meaning. It is a grammatical particle that does the connective or temporal work inside a Latin legal phrase rather than naming a legal concept in its own right.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Shortened form of "tummy."

Historical common usage: Not attested as an English word in Webster's 1913 in this form; the Latin adverb tum was understood in educated legal and clerical writing as "then" or "at that time."

The gap here is total rather than partial. The modern English word "tum" is informal anatomy. The legal Latin tum is a temporal adverb with no relationship to the English word beyond coincidental spelling. A researcher encountering tum in a historical legal document should treat it as Latin, not English.

Common Confusion

The source dictionaries presented under this headword contain entries that plainly do not belong to tum — including entries for jus quaesitum, the law of citations, trustee process, droit, ex gratia, ex hypothesi, and related Latin phrases. This reflects a known hazard in digitized historical law dictionaries: OCR errors and column-break misreadings cause entries to be tagged to the wrong headword. Researchers should not treat any substantive legal content appearing under a "tum" headword in historical dictionaries as genuinely defining tum. Those entries belong elsewhere and should be traced to their correct headwords before relying on them.

Why It Matters in Research

Tum matters in the Law Mind corpus almost entirely as a parsing problem rather than a definitional one. When it appears in a Latin maxim or phrase, the researcher's task is to read the full phrase, not to look up tum in isolation. The word signals a temporal contrast or sequence that shapes the meaning of whatever legal rule the phrase states.

The more significant research issue is the one flagged under Common Confusion above. Digitized historical legal dictionaries — including Bouvier's and Burrill's — frequently suffer from headword contamination in the T section, where typeface similarities between letters and OCR misreads cause entire columns of text to be assigned to the wrong entry. Any entry in a historical dictionary that seems substantively mismatched to its headword should be treated with suspicion and cross-checked against a physical or high-quality facsimile edition.

Researchers working with Latin legal phrases containing tum should consult a Latin legal glossary (Berger's Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law is the standard reference) rather than a common-law dictionary, which will rarely have a useful entry for a particle of this kind.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionary sources assembled here do not, in fact, define tum in any legally operative sense. Bouvier's entry that is genuinely connected to the Latin adverb gives only the bare translation "then" in contexts like paired temporal constructions. The other material appearing under this headword in the source dictionaries — covering jus quaesitum, trustee process, challenges for honor or rank, and ex gratia — belongs to entirely different entries and has been misassigned. This is not a case where historical dictionaries diverge in their treatment of a term; it is a case where the term has no extended treatment in any of the shelf sources because it requires none. Tum is infrastructure, not doctrine.

TUMmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

A double right, i. e. the right of possession joined with the right of property, which makes a complete title to lands, tenements and hereditaments. And when to this double right the actual possession is also united, when there is, according to the expression in Fleta, juris et seisincæ conjunctio, then, and then only, is the title to property completely legal. 2 Bl. Com. 199. Droit ne done pluis que soit demaunde (2 Inst. 286): Justice gives no more than is demanded. Droit ne poit pas morier (Jenk. Cent. 100): Right cannot die DROITS CIVILS.-In the French law, this phrase denotes private rights, the exercise of which is independent of the status (qualité) of citizen. Foreigners enjoy them, and the extent of that enjoyment is determined by the principle of reciprocity. Conversely, foreigners, although not residents in France, may be sued on contracts made by them in France. Brown. DROITS OF ADMIRALTY.-CerDROIT-DROITURAL.-" Droit" tain perquisites which originally belonged is Norman-French for "right" (Latin, directum). to the lord high admiral for the time In the old books it signifies especially a right to land. Thus, if a tenant in fee-simple was dis being by virtue of his office, or, during a seised of his land, his estate was said to be turned vacancy of the office, to the crown. The to a right, or a bare or naked right, meaning a most important droit seems to have been right of ownership; the disseisor thereby acquired a mere possession (only good as against property captured from an enemy during strangers), while the disseisee retained, in addiwar, either by the army or navy, or by a tion to his right of ownership, the right of possubject of the crown acting without com- Jurare est Deum in testem vocare, et est actus divini cultus (3 Inst. 165): To swear is to call God to witness, and is an act of religion. JURAT.-A memorandum written at the end of an affidavit, stating the place where, and the date when, the affidavit was sworn, followed by the signature of the commissioner, notary, or other person before whom it was sworn, and concluding with his description. See Sm. Ac. 83. JURATA.-The jury-clause in a Nisi Prius record in England. The entry jurata ponitur in respectu, is abolished. Com. L. P. Act, 1852, 104.