Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "by force whereof" or "by virtue whereof." Used in pleading and legal instruments to introduce the operative consequence of a prior recital — that is, to identify the legal authority, instrument, or fact from which a claimed right, power, or act derives its validity. The phrase signals that what follows flows directly from what was just described.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *vigore cujus* in historical pleadings, writs, or instruments should treat it as a structural signal: it marks the causal or authorizing link between a grant of authority and the action taken under it. In early common law pleading, precision in tracing authority through this kind of connective phrase was essential to the validity of a plea. A defect in the recited basis would undermine everything that *vigore cujus* introduced.
The phrase appears almost exclusively in Latin pleading materials and instruments predating the shift to English-language pleading formalized in England by the Pleading in English Act 1730. American researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside colonial-era records, ecclesiastical court materials, or historical treatises on common law pleading. Its functional equivalent in modern drafting is language such as "by virtue of which," "pursuant to which," or "by reason whereof" — all of which serve the same connective role without the Latin form.
The single citation in Burrill — 1 Lord Raymond 412 — places the phrase in the context of late seventeenth-century English common law reporting, the period when Latin pleading remained standard in the King's Bench and Common Pleas. Researchers tracing usage should look to pleading form books and Year Books of that era rather than expecting the phrase in substantive doctrinal analysis.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides a minimal but accurate entry: the phrase translates as "by force whereof" and is cited to 1 Lord Raymond 412. Burrill treats it as a term of art in Latin pleading without elaboration, which is appropriate given the phrase's purely formal, connective function. There is no substantive doctrinal content to unpack — the phrase is a pleading artifact, not a legal concept with its own independent doctrine.
Other major historical dictionaries, including Bouvier and Black's early editions, do not appear to carry a dedicated entry for *vigore cujus*, which suggests the phrase was regarded as sufficiently self-evident to trained Latin pleaders that extended definition was unnecessary. The absence from those sources is itself informative: the phrase belongs to the grammar of Latin legal drafting rather than to the vocabulary of legal doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is a relic of English common law Latin pleading and has no active jurisdictional significance in any modern American or English court. Its relevance is confined to historical legal research involving pre-1730 English records or colonial American materials that followed English pleading conventions.