Definition
A Latin term from Roman law meaning "more," "further," or "more time." In its primary procedural usage, amplius was the word spoken by the praetor when a cause before the judices was obscure or the evidence insufficient to permit a confident verdict — condemning or acquitting. The pronouncement had the effect of deferring the case to a later named day, allowing additional inquiry before judgment was rendered.
In civil law usage more broadly, amplius carried the sense of "more" in the fuller Latin equivalents magis and plus — appearing in phrases denoting greater completeness or absoluteness of a right or transfer.
Common Confusion
Amplius should not be confused with non liquet, the Roman law declaration that a matter was "not clear," though the two concepts are related. Non liquet was the formal statement by a juror or judex of personal inability to decide; amplius was the praetor's institutional response to that uncertainty — a procedural remedy, not a personal declaration. A researcher encountering either term in historical sources about Roman adjudication should treat them as distinct but companion concepts operating at different levels of the proceeding.
Why It Matters in Research
Amplius appears almost exclusively in historical and comparative law sources. Researchers will encounter it in treatises on Roman civil procedure, glossaries appended to works on the civil law tradition, and occasionally in scholarly commentary on equity procedure where Roman antecedents are invoked. It has no operative role in modern Anglo-American case law.
The term is a reliable signal that a source is engaging seriously with Roman procedural history. Its presence in an English-language legal text — particularly before the mid-nineteenth century — often marks a work written by a civilian-trained author or one addressing the intersection of common law and civil law traditions.
Burrill's entry is the most complete available, noting both the Roman procedural meaning and a second, broader civil law meaning ("more completely; more absolutely") with the fragment "Quod semel meum est ampl—" indicating the entry continues into a maxim or brocardic phrase that researchers may wish to trace. That fragment likely refers to a civil law maxim concerning the completeness of acquired rights, and the full text should be sought in Burrill's original print edition, as dictionary reprints sometimes truncate such entries.
Researchers using Law Mind corpus sources on Roman law, equity history, or comparative civil procedure should treat amplius as a term of art indexing procedural caution and institutional deference — a built-in continuance mechanism that reveals something important about how Roman adjudication managed uncertainty.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core procedural definition: amplius was the praetor's word for deferral when a cause was obscure and the judices uncertain. Black's (both editions) and Burrill are in full agreement on this, each citing Adam's Roman Antiquities (p. 287) as the authority — a reference to Alexander Adam's work on Roman antiquities, a standard historical source on Roman legal and social institutions.
Burrill alone expands the entry to include the civil law sense of the term as an intensifier meaning "more completely" or "more absolutely," attributing this to Brissonius — Barnabé Brisson, the sixteenth-century French jurist and civil law lexicographer whose works on Roman law terminology were widely cited in learned legal literature. This expansion is meaningful: it reflects the term's dual life as both a procedural term of art and a substantive modifier in civil law texts.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is any English common law application of the term. Burrill's fragment ("In English law. More; more completely; more absolutely.") suggests such an entry existed but is incomplete in available reproductions. Researchers should not assume English common law usage was substantial; the note may simply reflect amplius appearing in Latin maxims quoted in English courts.