The Mysterious "SS.": A
Puzzle in Law Documents'
By Charles Maar, A.M.
EVERYONE knows the two small esses commonly used at the head of affidavits and other legal documents, following the brace which includes the state and county names where the paper is witnessed or the action at law laid; but who knows their meaning? Judges appear not to have fathomed it, nor have law professors, or dictionaries or encyclopedias. The average dictionary and book of reference makes a stab at the meaning but apparently no one has seriously gone to work to dig up the origin and significance of "ss" or "ss." as it usually appears. One authority defines it amply as follows: "Saints; scilicet, to wit; semis, half; sessions." The usual explanation offered is scilicet, but the common abbre viation for this well-known word is sc., and besides, the meaning hardly applies to the place. So with "sic sigillum," since tL. S.] — locus sigillutn — appears appropriately at the end of the affidavit or document. "Solemnly sworn" is volunteered by some, while others more learned in the law frankly confess that "ss." is a mystery, or "a moot point." The standard law dictionaries carry us no farther, although Bouvier refers casually to the "ss collar" worn by chief justices in Great Britain. General American works of reference are nearly all at sea upon this hieroglyph, as it may properly be called. Harper's
Book of Facts gives a clue leading back to Great Britain, where our American legal forms and practices had their immediate origin, as follows: SS. A symbol of unknown antiquity worn on the collars of the superior judges and lord mayors in England; formerly by persons attached to the royal household and others. It was assumed by certain classes, never bestowed, and had no connection with heraldry. — Stormonth.
brance; a souvemr. It seems that, on the Wednesday preceding Easter Day, 1465, as Sir Anthony was speaking to his royal sister, "on his knees," all the ladies of the court gathered round him, and bound to his left knee a band of gold adorned with stones fashioned into the letters s.s. (souvenance or remembrance), and to this band was suspended an enameled "Forget-me-not." — Lytton's Last of the Barons, IV. 5. All of which points clearly to English antiquities, and a search in Notes and Queries yields from the issue of February 25, 1882, the title of a roll comprising the record of a suit heard under Henry III as follows: ss. Rotulus de Placitis que sequebantur dominum Rcgem coram W. de Raleigh annis Regis Hcnrici filii Regis Johannis octanodecimo incipiente nonodecimo.
1 [This article, though written without knowl edge of Mr. Joseph Osmun Skinner's paper (25 Green Bag 59), is really tantamount to a criticism of the solution therein offered. We are glad to have so interesting a subject examined in different lights. — Ed.]
A keen-eyed correspondent, evidently having found no satisfaction in ordinary works of reference, wrote immediately asking for "the correct meaning of ss. affixed to the rotulus mentioned and
After this quotation from a standard British source, the following is added to trap the unwary: On legal documents, 55. or ss. (scilicet) means to wit, namely. SS., Brewer's souvenance, Hand forget-me-not; Book also gives in aremem clue :
