What are maxims of law?

About this compendium

This volume gathers under one cover the legal maxims of the Western common law tradition — the ancient principles that form the bedrock upon which all Anglo-American jurisprudence rests. The principal sources are works now in the public domain: Bacon's Maxims of the Common Law (1630), Noy's Maxims (1641), Wingate's Maxims (1658), Coke's Institutes (1628–1644), Blackstone's Commentaries (1765–1769), Bouvier's Law Dictionary (1856), Broom's Legal Maxims (1874), Wharton's Legal Maxims (1878), and Jackson's Latin for Lawyers (1915), among others.

The maxims themselves are the common law heritage of the English-speaking peoples — no compiler invented them, and no compilation owns them.

The purpose of this compilation is practical. The maxims are organized not alphabetically by Latin (which assumes the reader already knows what he is looking for) but topically, in twelve books that follow the structure of law itself: from its foundations in natural law and the common law, through sovereignty, persons, relationships, property, contracts, wrongs, courts, evidence, interpretation, instruments, and logic.

What is a maxim of law?

Black's Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, defines a maxim:

An established principle or proposition. A principle of law universally admitted, as being a correct statement of the law, or as agreeable to reason.

And the critical practical point that separates a maxim from a mere proverb:

Maxims are but attempted general statements of rules of law and are law only to extent of application in adjudicated cases.

— Swetland v. Curtiss Airports Corporation, D.C. Ohio, 41 F.2d 929, 936.

This is the key to understanding how maxims operate in practice. The validity of a maxim is not the question. Its application is the question. When a maxim is cited in a legal proceeding, the opposing party cannot argue that the maxim is wrong — they can only argue that it does not apply. If it applies, it controls.

A maxim of law requires no proof, no argument, no discourse. It is universally admitted as a correct statement of the law. When cited in a filing, it is not presented as an argument — it is presented as a conclusion of reason that stands on its own authority.

Maxims and due process of law

The phrase "due process of law" appears in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. It descends from the Magna Carta's per legem terrae — "by the law of the land" — which Sir Edward Coke glossed as meaning proceedings conducted according to settled legal principles, not merely whatever process the legislature invents. The Supreme Court adopted Coke's reading in Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 59 U.S. 272 (1856).

What does "due process of law" actually mean in practice? Black's Law Dictionary, 2nd Edition, citing Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, gives the definitive answer:

Due process of law in each particular case means such an exercise of the powers of the government as the settled maxims of law permit and sanction, and under such safeguards for the protection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the class of cases to which the one in question belongs.

Read that again. Due process of law means argued according to the maxims. Not according to the legislature's latest enactment. Not according to an agency's internal policy manual. According to the settled maxims of law — the very principles collected in this volume.

Justice Gorsuch reaffirmed this understanding in 2024:

Due process of law generally implied and include[d] … judex [a judge], regular allegations, opportunity to answer, and a trial according to some settled course of judicial proceedings… This constitutional baseline was designed to serve as 'a restraint on the legislative' branch, preventing Congress from 'mak[ing] any process "due process of law," by its mere will.'

— SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109, 162 (2024) (Gorsuch, J., concurring).

State constitutions and the law of the land

The federal Constitution is not alone in this guarantee. The bills of rights in the state constitutions — many of them older than the Fifth Amendment itself — preserve the same principle, often in language drawn directly from Magna Carta. Where the federal text uses the phrase "due process of law," many state constitutions retain the original per legem terrae formulation: "the law of the land." The two phrases are synonymous.

Virginia, Declaration of Rights, Section 8 (1776)

The oldest state bill of rights in America

That no man be deprived of his liberty, except by the law of the land or the judgement of his peers.

This is not a paraphrase of Magna Carta. It is Magna Carta — Chapter 29, rendered in English, carried forward through seven centuries of common law and planted in the declaration of rights of the first sovereign state to adopt one. Virginia does not stop at due process. Section 2 declares the nature of the relationship between the people and those who exercise government power:

That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

Officers of government are trustees and servants. They hold delegated authority subject to the duties of a trustee: loyalty, good faith, and strict adherence to the terms of the trust.

Massachusetts, Part the First, Article XII (1780)

Predating the Fifth Amendment by eleven years

And no subject shall be arrested, imprisoned, despoiled, or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.

Tennessee, Article I, Section 8

That no man shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed or deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.

Tennessee does not leave the matter to inference. Article XI, Section 16 declares:

The declaration of rights hereto prefixed is declared to be a part of the Constitution of this State, and shall never be violated on any pretense whatever. And to guard against transgression of the high powers we have delegated, we declare that every thing in the bill of rights contained, is excepted out of the General powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate.

"Excepted out of the General powers of government." The bill of rights is not a grant from the government to the people. It is a reservation by the people against the government — a boundary that no statute, no regulation, and no administrative proceeding may cross.

North Carolina, Article I, Section 19

No person shall be taken, imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the law of the land.

Texas, Article I, Section 19

No citizen of this State shall be deprived of life, liberty, property, privileges or immunities, or in any manner disfranchised, except by the due course of the law of the land.

Note the phrase: "the due course of the law of the land." Not "due process of law" — the more ancient formulation, combining Coke's gloss ("due course") with the Magna Carta original ("the law of the land"). The meaning is unmistakable: proceedings must follow the settled course prescribed by the common law and the maxims that undergird it.

Why this matters

The pattern across the state constitutions is consistent and deliberate. Whether the phrase is "due process of law," "the law of the land," or "the due course of the law of the land," the meaning is the same: proceedings must conform to the settled principles of the common law. The maxims collected in this volume are those principles. They are not legal curiosities or historical artifacts. They are the living substance of what every state constitution — and the federal Constitution — means when it guarantees that no man shall be deprived of his rights except by the law of the land.

A man who knows these maxims does not merely know the law. He knows the reason of the law — and the reason of the law is the law.

How to use this site

Each maxim entry contains:

• Reference — its position in the Book.Section.Entry system (e.g., 2.1.4 = Book II, Section 1, Entry 4). Permanent and citable as NeCede Max. 2.1.4.
• Latin original — the canonical Latin text of the maxim.
• English translation — a plain-language rendering.
• Source — the works where this maxim appears, with specific citations.
• Cross-references — related maxims, listed by number, traceable through the web of interconnected principles.
• Explanation — a one-sentence guide to what the maxim means and how it operates.
• Scenarios — concrete real-world situations where the maxim applies.

Three ways to find what you need:

• Search — full-text across Latin, English, application notes, and scenarios.
• Browse by Book — twelve books, organized by the structure of law itself.
• Browse by Topic — cross-cutting tags like Due Process, Consent, Fraud, Sovereignty.