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The black letter law refers to the basic standard elements for a particular field of law, which are generally known and free from doubt or dispute. It may, for example, be the standard elements for a contract or the technical definition of battery. The phrase does not come from association with Black's Law Dictionary, which was first published in 1891. A quick search of legal databases turns up Naglee v. Ingersoll, 7 Pa. 185 (1847) where the phrase "black-letter law" is used. There is also a U.S. Supreme Court case, Jackson ex dem Bradford v. Huntington, that uses the phrase "black letter" in the same sense as black letter law "It is seldom that a case in our time savors so much of the black letter, but the course of decisions in New York renders it unavailable . . ."[1] Instead, it presumably refers to the practice of setting law books and citing legal precedents in blackletter type, a tradition that survived long after the switch to roman and italic text for other printed works. The phrase definitely refers to a distillation of the common law into general and accepted legal principles. You can see this in the quote above from the Supreme Court where the Court is noting that while the black letter law is clear, New York precedent deviates from the general principles.
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