Definition
An archaic Law French term denoting a promoter or setter-up of causes — that is, a person who initiates, advances, or brings forward a legal proceeding or action. The term describes the role of one who organizes and presents a cause for litigation, combining the functions of promoting the matter and then arguing or pleading it before a tribunal.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear only in the oldest strata of common law sources — Year Books and early Norman-French legal records — and has no living currency in modern legal practice or pleading. Researchers encountering the word in primary sources should treat it as a descriptor of a procedural role rather than a formal office or title. The entry in Burrill cites the Year Books (Pasch. 8, likely a Yearbook Paschal term reference) and Kelham's glossary, both of which are the natural first ports of call for verification. Because Law French vocabulary was inconsistently spelled across manuscripts and printed editions, variant spellings are probable; researchers searching digitized Year Book corpora should not rely on a single orthographic form. The companion term ADDRESSER (Adresser) appears in the same Burrill entry with a distinct meaning — "to hold up" or "to erect" — and the two should not be conflated despite their proximity on the page. The Kelham reference in both sub-entries is Robert Kelham's Glossary of Norman and Old French Words (1779), a standard authority for this vocabulary and a useful secondary source for contextualizing either term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source dictionary for this term, and the entry is notably compressed. Burrill supplies two components: first, the gloss "a promoter, or setter up of causes," and second, a procedural note that the addoubeur would "plea first, and then argue" — suggesting a combined pleading-and-arguing function rather than a purely preparatory role. This is a small but meaningful distinction: the term appears to describe a participant who both initiated the cause and carried it forward through argument, closer to a modern advocate than a mere promoter in the background sense.
No entry for addoubeur appears in Tomlin's, Jacob's, or Bouvier's law dictionaries, reflecting the term's extreme archaism even by the standards of nineteenth-century legal lexicography. Black's Law Dictionary does not carry the term. Burrill's willingness to include it reflects his comparatively deep engagement with Year Book and Norman-French material. Researchers should weigh the definition accordingly: it rests on two thin authorities (a Year Book citation and Kelham) and represents a snapshot of a procedural vocabulary that had already been dead for centuries when Burrill compiled his work.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to the medieval English common law tradition and its Norman-French procedural vocabulary. It has no counterpart in civil law systems and carries no jurisdictional relevance outside historical English legal research.