Definition
A plea in common law pleading, entered by a defendant in an action of trespass, designed to compel the plaintiff to specify the precise location where the alleged trespass occurred. By forcing the plaintiff to identify a particular place, the defendant could then frame a more precise response — often by denying that any trespass occurred at that specific location, or by asserting a right to be on the land identified. Also called blank bar.
The common bar was a procedural maneuver, not a substantive defense. Its function was to narrow and sharpen the pleadings before the merits were joined, requiring the plaintiff to commit to a definite factual allegation that the defendant could then contest or confess and avoid.
Common Language
This is pure legal jargon from the common law pleading system. Neither "common" nor "bar" in this compound carries its ordinary modern meaning. The word "bar" here does not refer to a legal profession, a physical barrier, or a court barrier — it is used in the sense of a pleading that bars or checks the opponent's position. No COMMON LANGUAGE section is warranted because the term has no meaningful ordinary-English counterpart to contrast against.
Common Confusion
Common bar and blank bar are the same thing — the terms are used interchangeably across historical sources. Researchers should not treat them as distinct pleas. The synonym "blank bar" appears to derive from the practice of leaving the specific place designation blank in the plaintiff's original declaration, which the common bar then forced the plaintiff to fill in.
Common bar should also be distinguished from the general issue in trespass (not guilty) and from other special pleas in bar (such as the statute of limitations or release), which operate as substantive defenses rather than procedural compulsion devices. The common bar was not an attempt to defeat the claim outright; it was a preliminary pleading mechanism to define the geographical scope of the dispute before substantive defenses were raised.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially extinct in modern practice. No jurisdiction retains the common law pleading system in which the common bar had a functional role. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in three contexts: historical case reports from English common law courts and early American state courts (roughly pre-1850); treatises on common law pleading, particularly those written by or referencing Stephen's Principles of Pleading; and legal history scholarship examining the transition from common law pleading to code pleading and, ultimately, modern notice pleading.
The key trap for corpus researchers is anachronism. A researcher reading a 19th-century American case involving a trespass dispute may encounter references to a "common bar" or "blank bar" and mistake it for a substantive defense or a ruling on the merits. It was neither — it was a step in a highly formalized pleading dance that modern procedure has entirely discarded.
The place-specificity requirement enforced by the common bar also has a distant conceptual echo in modern particularity requirements (such as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) for fraud), but this parallel should not be pressed too far. The procedural posture, purpose, and consequences were entirely different.
Researchers working in early American trespass cases should note that the common bar is most frequently encountered in actions of trespass quare clausum fregit (trespass to land), where the location of the alleged entry was central to the dispute. It appears less frequently in trespass vi et armis actions where location was less determinative.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries are in complete agreement, reflecting the narrow and stable definition of this term. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's provide virtually identical language drawn from Stephen's Principles of Pleading. Burrill's is the most economical, simply identifying the plea and directing the reader to the entry for "blank bar." There is no meaningful divergence across the sources.
The uniform reliance on Stephens' Pleading across the dictionaries is itself instructive: it signals that this term's primary doctrinal home is treatise literature on pleading practice, not case law. Researchers should go directly to Stephen's Principles of Pleading (and its American annotated editions) for the fullest treatment of how the common bar operated in practice, including the procedural sequence it triggered and the forms of response available to the plaintiff after entry of the plea.
None of the historical dictionaries address the common bar's decline or the effect of the Field Code reforms (beginning 1848) that abolished common law pleading forms in states adopting code pleading. This is a gap: by the time most of these dictionaries were compiled, the common bar was already a historical artifact in most American jurisdictions, but the entries do not flag this obsolescence.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses common law pleading forms or the common bar. The matched entries — on laches, unclean hands, and common fund doctrine — are not meaningfully related to this term. No cross-reference is warranted.