Latin legal maxims, court vocabulary, and jurisprudence terms.
The common law inherited hundreds of Latin maxims from Roman jurisprudence — short, crystallised legal principles that courts still cite today. Phrases like habeas corpus, mens rea, in loco parentis, and prima facie are not archaic relics: they carry precise legal meanings that English paraphrases cannot match in economy or precision.
Law is the professional domain that has preserved Latin most intact. Lawyers still use “habeas corpus,” “mens rea,” “prima facie,” “pro bono,” and “amicus curiae” in their original Latin form — untranslated — because these phrases carry specific legal meanings built up over centuries of precedent. Add the Norman French layer (plaintiff, defendant, jury, verdict) and you have a legal vocabulary that is a direct fossil record of two conquests: Roman and Norman.