VIDERE

3 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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VIDEREAuthored
The Law Mind • 787 words
Definition
A Latin term with two distinct senses encountered in legal texts and historical sources: 1. (General Latin) To see; to perceive, understand, or know. Appears in legal writing primarily in its contracted directive form *vide* (see) and the compound phrase *quod vide* (which see, abbreviated *q.v.*). Used as a word of reference directing the reader to consult another passage, authority, or definition. 2. (Old Practice) To view; to inspect. Used in medieval procedural contexts to describe a formal act of viewing — typically of land, a boundary, or a person — as part of a judicial or quasi-judicial proceeding. ---
Common Confusion
The two senses of *videre* are easily collapsed. The general referential sense (*vide*, *quod vide*) is a bibliographic and rhetorical convention found throughout legal literature of any period. The procedural sense — formal viewing of land or other subject matter — is a distinct term of art belonging to old English practice and carries substantive legal weight. A researcher encountering *videre* or its derivatives should determine from context whether the source is directing attention elsewhere (bibliographic) or describing an act within a proceeding (procedural). Researchers should also distinguish *videre* from *visus* (view, as a noun) and *visnee* or *visne* (neighborhood, relevant to venue), which are related in root but serve different functions in legal texts. ---
Why It Matters in Research
The bibliographic usage is the one most frequently encountered across the Law Mind corpus. Whenever a historical treatise, digest, or pleading manual uses *vide* or *quod vide*, it is operating as a cross-reference signal — the equivalent of a modern "see" or "cf." citation. Readers who treat these as substantive terms rather than navigation cues will misread the architecture of older texts. The procedural sense is narrower and older. Burrill traces it to Fleta, a late-thirteenth-century Latin treatise on English law, placing the term squarely in medieval common law procedure. By the time of the major institutional writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the standalone procedural use of *videre* had largely been absorbed into more specific terminology (view, *visus facere*, writ of view). Researchers working with Year Books, early plea rolls, or Fleta itself should be alert to the procedural sense; researchers working with anything from the early modern period forward are almost certainly encountering the bibliographic sense. Because *vide* and *quod vide* are so pervasive in historical legal dictionaries and encyclopedias, they function as a built-in indexing system in the sources themselves. Tracing a *quod vide* reference in Anderson, Burrill, or Bouvier can lead to substantive doctrine that is not always surfaced by keyword searches on the primary term. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson and Burrill capture the two senses but treat them differently in emphasis. Anderson's entry is primarily interested in the bibliographic convention — *vide* as a word of reference, *quod vide* as a phrase directing the reader onward. The fragment in Anderson's source material appears embedded within an entry on double jeopardy, which illustrates how *videre* derivatives functioned in practice: as connective tissue pointing from one doctrine to related material rather than as freestanding terms. Burrill gives the procedural sense its own entry and anchors it specifically to Fleta, book 4, chapter 6, section 4, which deals with the formal viewing of land in the context of writs and real actions. Burrill's economy here is characteristic — he identifies the term, marks it as belonging to old practice, and supplies the source. Neither dictionary attempts a full analysis of the procedural term's history, and neither explains the transition from the procedural to the purely referential usage. Researchers seeking the procedural dimension in depth will need to go beyond these dictionaries to Fleta directly or to secondary scholarship on medieval English real actions. Neither source flags the potential for confusion between the two senses, which is the principal research risk when the term appears without clear context. ---
Jurisdictional Note
The procedural sense is rooted in English common law and has no direct American procedural counterpart. The bibliographic sense (*vide*, *quod vide*) is pan-jurisdictional, appearing wherever Latin citation conventions were used in legal writing — England, the United States, and civil law jurisdictions alike. ---
Related Terms
Vide — contracted directive form; the most common surface appearance of this term in legal texts Quod vide (q.v.) — compound phrase meaning "which see"; standard cross-reference convention Visus — view (noun); related procedural term in real actions Visus facere — to make a view; formal writ process for inspection of land View — English procedural equivalent in modern usage Words of reference — general category of referential language in legal drafting and scholarship Fleta — primary source for the procedural sense
VIDEREmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
a Nemo debet bis vexari pro uno et eadem causa. No person should twice be prosecuted for one and the same cause. No > second suit can be maintained over a matter once fairly adjudicated.1 No person shall be twice put in jeopardy. See ADJUDICATION, Former; ESTOPPEL, By record; JEOP- L. To see; to perceive, understand, know. Vide. See. Quod vide: which see. Words of reference. The last expression is abbreviated q. v., in referring to one word or subject only, as, that immediately preceding it; and qq. v., when the reference is to each of the several terms or topics just mentioned. Videlicet. From videre licet, it is permitted to see: as you may see; to wit; namely. Abbreviated viz. Scilicet, that is, scire licet, as you may know; to wit. See WIT. The office of a videlicet, or a scilicet, is to particularize what is general in the words preceding, or in some other manner to explain what goes before. While a viz. may restrain the generality of preceding words, it cannot enlarge or diminish the preceding subject-matter. If the averment immediately preceding is direct and positive, that which immediately follows is so. Any fact, in its nature traversable, may be traversed though placed under a viz. A material fact cannot be made immaterial by being placed there. Therefore, if an averment under a viz. contains matter in itself material, but which is repugnant to what goes VICINITY; VICINAGE. Neighborbefore, the pleading is ill. If that which comes under hood; county. a viz. is immaterial, or of mere form, its repugnancy to what goes before does not affect the pleading, but it will be rejected as surplusage. Etymologically and by common understanding, "in the vicinity" means in the neighborhood, and "neighborhood," as applied to place, signifies nearness as opposed to remoteness. Whether a place is in the vicinity of another depends upon no arbitrary rule of distance or topography. "Vicinity" adnugatory previous specific averments. The terms generally used are "to wit," or "that is to say." mits of a more indefinite and wider latitude in place than proximity or contiguity, and, as applied to territory, may embrace a more extended space than that lying contiguous to the place in question; as applied to towns and other territorial divisions, may embrace those not adjacent. See COUNTY, 2; VENUE. 15 Mass. 176; 7 id, 423; 9 id. 423; 99 id. 203; 76 Pa. 239; 13 R. I. 477; 76 Va. 925. 25 Pet. 223; 1 Johns. Ch. 527, 530; 4 M. & S. 168. 16 Op. Att.-Gen. 298, 616. F. voisinage: L. vicinus, near. • [Langley v. Barnstead, 63 Ν. Η. 247 (1884), Allen, J. A viz. serves to give additional particulars of time or place, or circumstances explanatory of previous statements made in general terms; it cannot render Will not avoid a variance, nor dispense with exact proof in an allegation of material matter. If repugnant to what has gone before, it will be rejected, but not if it can be reconciled and made restrictive. L. vitium, fault, vice. 2 Dickson v. McCoy, 39 N. Y. 403 (1868). 3 Gould, Plead. 58, secs. 35-41; United States v. Burnham, 1 Mas. 67 (1816), cases; Steph. Pl. 309; 1 Greenl. Εν. § 60. 4 Lewis v. Hitchcock, 10 F. R. 7 (1882), Brown, J. 5 Bruguier v. United States, 1 Dak. 9 (1867); State v. Murphy, 55 Vt. 549 (1883); 26 Conn. 431; 47 III. 175; 132 Mass. 3, 491; 9 Minn. 317; 7 Cow. 45; 4 Johns. 450; 2 Flip. 445. • Wilson v. Mount, 3 Ves. Jr. *194 (1796). (69)
VIDEREmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870
Lat. In old practice. To view. Fleta, lib. 4, c. 6, § 4.

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