brutum fulmen

• fulmen brutum

From Latin brutum (“stupid”) + fulmen (“lightning”), derived from a 1680 pamphlet by Thomas Barlow of that title, originally from a passage of Pliny's Natural History: "hinc bruta fulmina et vana" ("these senseless and ineffectual thunder-claps", intended as a literal description of lightning).

brutum fulmen (plural bruta fulmina)

1. (law) A judgement without effect.
   • 1910, William Ainger Wigram, An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church, page 112:

     ... it was a question only whether the one hundred and eighty inconsistent canons thus added to the Corpus Juris of the Church would remain a mere brutum fulmen, or whether they would be the source of endless litigation and schism.

   • 1958, Peter Edward Nygh, Conflict of Laws in Australia, page 149:

     Generally speaking the making of an order which will be a brutum fulmen serves no good purpose of justice.

   • 1987, Cal. Ct. App., Lazzaroni v. Larson‎:

     The later order of May 8, 1984, purporting also to declare the same declaration of trust void and revoked, accomplished nothing. It was a brutum fulmen.

2. (archaic) An empty threat.
   • 1733, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, Dissertation Upon Parties, page 53:

     All These would have been Blasts of Wind, bruta Fulmina, no more, if the King had yielded ...

   • 1824, William Henry Pyne, Wine and Walnuts, page 301:

     'But nobody heeds you, my worthy; it's mere waste of powder—shooting at emptiness, brutum fulmen—mere play-house thunder ...'

   • 1840, Adolphus Slade, Travels in Germany and Russia, page 269:

     ... he owed his success to the threat to march on the capital, which would have been a brutum fulmen had it been capable of withstanding a siege.