Maxim - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition maxim

Definition :

Maxim [fr. maximum Lat.], an axiom; a general principle; a leading truth so called, says Coke, quia maxima est ejus dignitas et certissima auctoritas, atque quod maxime omnibus probetur, 1 Inst. 11.

Modern opinion, however, does not rate maxims so highly, and Lord Esher, M.R., in Yarmouth v. France, (1887) 19 QBD 653, in connection with Volenti non fit injuria, went so far as to say that they are almost in variably misleading, and for the most part so large and general in their language that they always include something which really is not intended to be included in them. Similarly, the late Mr. Justice Stephen (Hist. Crim. Law, 94) wrote:-'They are rather minims than maxims, for they give not a particularly great, but a particularly small, amount of information. As often as not the exceptions and qualifications are more important than the so-called rules'--which, while they mostly bad abstracts of it. A contrary view, however, is given in a lecture by Mr. H.F. Manistry, K.C., on 'The Use of Legal Maxims,' delivered in Gray's Inn Hall to the Solicitors' Managing Clerks' Association in January, 1905: see Law Times Newsp. For January 14, 1905. Consult Broom's Legal Maxims; Mew's Digest, tit. 'Maxims,' and see full collections in Encyclop'dia of the Laws of England, and in Bouvier's Law Dictionary, tit. 'Maxim' (where about 1500 are collected, including duplicates). Bacon collected 800, but published 25 only. His Introduction to them begins with the celebrated 'I hold every man to be a debtor to his own profession.'