UND

Definition

"Und" is not an independent legal term of art. In the context of historical English legal records — particularly medieval and early modern pleading, jury rolls, and court documents — "und" appears as a scribal abbreviation or variant rendering, most commonly for the Latin "undecim" (eleven) or as part of compound expressions in law Latin and early law French. Its significance in legal manuscripts is contextual and numeral: "undecim" was the standard Latin word for eleven, and its appearance in jury records carries doctrinal weight in the history of verdict formation. In the Burrill extract reproduced in the source material, "undecim" appears in the phrase "prædicti undecim concorditer et præcise dicunt" — meaning "the aforesaid eleven [jurors] unanimously and precisely say" — marking the moment in a medieval jury proceeding where eleven of twelve jurors agreed, with one dissenting. The judgment then turns on that near-unanimity. This usage reflects the pre-modern English common law practice in which jury verdicts were subject to scrutiny when a juror dissented from the majority view, and courts evaluated whether concordance among eleven was sufficient or whether unanimity of all twelve was required.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Und" in contemporary English is a nonstandard spelling of "and," typically used to represent a German accent in informal writing, since "und" is the standard German word for "and." It may also refer to a wave or billow-like marking in heraldry and related decorative arts. Historical common usage: Not separately treated in Webster's 1913 as a legal term; appears in English primarily as a prefix root (as in "undulate") derived from the Latin "unda" (wave). Editorial note: The gap between the common English sense ("und" as a phonetic rendering of "and," or as a wave) and the legal-archival sense is complete. Researchers encountering "und" or "undecim" in legal manuscripts should not interpret it through any modern or German-language lens. In historical legal documents, the term's only significant function is numeral — marking the count of jurors in a panel or the tally of a verdict.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with medieval English plea rolls, assize records, or early common law jury materials will encounter "undecim" repeatedly in jury verdict transcriptions. The doctrinal importance is not trivial: the question of whether eleven jurors sufficed, or whether unanimous agreement of all twelve was required, was a contested issue in early English jury law. The Burrill excerpt captures exactly this moment — a court rendering judgment on the basis of eleven concordant jurors over one dissenting, and the reported decision turns on whether that concordance was legally sufficient. Two research traps exist here. First, abbreviation: scribal hands in medieval records often contracted "undecim" to "und'" or "und" with a suspension mark, which can be misread by researchers unfamiliar with Latin numeral vocabulary in legal manuscripts. Mistaking "und" for a conjunction or for "unda" (wave) would corrupt a transcription of what is actually a juror count. Second, doctrinal context: the modern requirement of jury unanimity in criminal cases developed over centuries. Sources from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reflect an earlier, more fluid standard. A reader who encounters "undecim concorditer" and assumes the eleven-juror verdict was irregular by the standards of the time may misread the record — in some periods and courts, near-unanimity carried legal effect. Corpus connections: This term's relevance in the Law Mind corpus is almost entirely archival. It will appear in transcriptions of medieval English court rolls, Year Books, and treatises on early jury practice. Researchers using Burrill for guidance on historical jury proceedings should treat "undecim" entries as a gateway into the broader doctrinal history of verdict unanimity.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary treats "undecim" not as a standalone entry but as it appears embedded in reproduced court records, where the Latin text of early English judgments is quoted to illustrate procedural points about jury deliberation and verdict formation. The entry excerpted in the source material is notable because it preserves the actual language of a medieval judgment evaluating the legal weight of an eleven-to-one jury finding. Burrill does not synthesize a doctrinal rule from this excerpt but uses it as a primary source illustration — a practice consistent with his method throughout the dictionary of anchoring procedural vocabulary in original documents rather than abstract definition. What Burrill's treatment does not supply, and what researchers must seek elsewhere, is a systematic account of when eleven-juror concordance was treated as sufficient and when it was not. The historical dictionaries on the shelf do not close this gap; it requires engagement with Year Book scholarship and histories of jury trial development.

Jurisdictional Note

The jury unanimity question implicit in "undecim" contexts is a historical English common law matter. Modern unanimity requirements in criminal jury trials have distinct constitutional and statutory foundations in U.S. and U.K. law that are not derived directly from medieval practice and should not be read back into early records.

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