In legal history, the term was prevalent as distinguished from lex non scripta, also and more commonly now known as the common law.
Modern law, in its gradual movement away from Latin terms, prefers the word statutes or legislation.
As an example of the use of this word, it was described in a Matthew Hale's The History of the Common Law of England and An Analysis of the Civil Part of the Law (London: Henry Butterworth, Law-Bookseller, 1820):
"... lex scripta, namely statutes or acts of parliament which, in their original formation are reduced to writing, and are so preserved in their original form, and in the same stile (sic) and words wherein they were first made."