What Does ‘Habeas Corpus’ Literally Mean in Latin?

The Latin phrase Habeas corpus is used to refer to a legal writ dictating that a person who has been detained or imprisoned must be brought before a court to determine whether or not they have been detained lawfully. The writ is intended to prevent individuals from being indefinitely imprisoned without trial. If you ask a lawyer, most of them will tell you that Habeas corpus means “Produce the body.” This is not an inaccurate translation, but it is not the most literal translation either.

In addition to the standard translation, you can find all sorts of other claims about what the phrase supposedly literally means on the internet. Unfortunately, these claims nearly always come from people who don’t know Latin and who have managed to severely bungle their “literal” translations.

What people say Habeas corpus means

If you go online, people say all kinds of things about what Habeas corpus supposedly means. Here are just a few examples I found in various answers to the question “What does habeas corpus mean?” on Quora:

• This answer claims that it literally means “to have a body.”

• This answer claims that it literally means “bring the body here” or “bring him here bodily, under guard.”

• This answer claims that it literally means “you may have the body.”

• This answer claims that it literally means “you shall have the body.”

It seems that all anyone can agree on is that the phrase has something to do with some kind of body. It will therefore probably come as little surprise to most people that every single one of these supposed literal translations is inaccurate in some way or another.

What it actually means

Here is an analysis of the phrase:

• Habeas is the second-person singular present active subjunctive form of the second-conjugation verb habeo, meaning “to have,” “hold,” or “possess.” In this context, habeas is functioning as a jussive, so it should be translated as “You must have.” (Bizarrely enough, despite the remarkable similarities in both sound and definition, the Latin word habeo and the English word have are not cognates.)

• Corpus is the accusative singular form of the third-declension neuter noun corpus, meaning “body.” In this case, it is functioning as the direct object of the verb habeas. There are no definite or indefinite articles in Latin, but, since we are presumably talking about a specific body in this instance, it is probably most accurate to translate this word as “the body.”

The phrase Habeas corpus therefore most literally means “You must have the body.”

The phrase is also, however, sometimes attested in the longer form “Habeas corpus coram nobis ad subjiciendum.” Here is an analysis of the longer version of the phrase:

• Coram is a preposition that takes an ablative object. It means “before” or “in the presence of.”

• Nobis is the ablative plural form of the Latin first-person personal pronoun. Here it is functioning as the object of coram. The phrase coram nobis should therefore be translated as either “before us” or “in our presence.”

• Ad is a preposition that takes an accusative object. It means “toward,” “for,” “against,” or “for the purpose of.”

• Subjiciendum is the accusative gerund form of the verb subjicio, meaning “to place before” or “to submit.” The phrase ad subjiciendum therefore means “for [the purpose of] submitting.”

The full phrase “Habeas corpus coram nobis ad subjiciendum” therefore literally means “You must have the body before us for submitting.”

The basic idea behind the phrase is that the court is ordering for the person who is detained to be brought to the court for an assessment of whether they should be released.

ABOVE: Photograph from this German website of the interior of the Carcer Tullianum, a surviving ancient Roman prison. Habeas corpus prevents people from being indefinitely imprisoned without trial.

Why the other translations are not literal

Here is how we know the other translations I listed in the first section are inaccurate:

• “Produce the body” is not a perfectly literal translation of Habeas corpus because, although it accurately reproduces the meaning of the phrase, the word habeo literally means “to have,” “hold,” or “possess,” not “to produce.”

• Habeas corpus does not literally mean “to have a body,” because habeas is a conjugated subjunctive verb form, not an infinitive. The infinitive form of habeo is habere.

• Habeas corpus does not literally mean “Bring him here bodily, under guard,” since there is nothing whatsoever in the Latin phrase about the subject being guarded. We can assume that a prisoner brought before court would probably be guarded, but that doesn’t change the fact that no guards are mentioned in the text at hand.

• Habeas corpus does not mean “You may have the body” either. I think that the reason why some people have rendered the phrase this way is because they know that the subjunctive mood is generally used to describe things that are potentially true but not necessarily true at the moment. What they are ignoring, however, is that, in this particular case, the word habeas is clearly being used as a jussive subjunctive, meaning it is a command or statement of something that must come true, not a statement of mere possibility.

• Habeas corpus does not literally mean “You shall have the body” because habeas is in the present tense, not the future tense. The phrase dictates that you must have the body right now, not that you should have it at some indeterminate point in the future.

Thankfully, all of these translations do at least manage to capture the gist of the phrase, which is more than can be said about plenty of other mistranslations of Latin phrases. For instance, a popular misunderstanding of the Latin word vomitorium has led to the persistent misconception that the Romans had places where they would routinely go to vomit. In reality, the word vomitorium simply refers to a passage in a theater through which audience members can leave at the end of the performance.

Similarly, a misunderstanding of the meaning of the Latin word secretus has simultaneously led to the misconception that the word secretary originally meant “secret-keeper” and the misconception that the Vatican Apostolic Archive is full of top secret incriminating records.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of people walking out of an amphitheater through a vomitorium