Definition
COMMON PLEAS carries two related but distinct meanings that researchers must keep separate:
1. As a category of civil action: Common pleas are civil suits between private parties — controversies of subject against subject — as distinguished from pleas of the crown, which are criminal prosecutions brought by the sovereign. The term captures the broad body of ordinary civil litigation: debt, trespass, contract, property disputes. The defining feature is that the crown has no direct interest in the outcome; the quarrel is between private persons, or between a private person and the government on a civil cause of action.
2. As a court name: The Court of Common Pleas is a court of record with general original jurisdiction over civil actions. In English legal history, it was one of the three great common law courts at Westminster, alongside King's Bench and Exchequer. Its jurisdiction was fixed in a certain place — the requirement that common pleas should not follow the king's court but be held in some certain place derives directly from Magna Carta (9 Hen. III, c. 17). American states borrowed the name freely, and courts of common pleas persist today in several jurisdictions as trial courts of general civil (and sometimes criminal) jurisdiction.
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Common Confusion
The word "pleas" in this term does not refer to criminal pleas — the guilty pleas, not-guilty pleas, or plea bargains of modern criminal procedure. The confusion is understandable because "plea" now carries a heavily criminal connotation in everyday legal usage. In the historical common law framework, a "plea" was simply the defendant's answer or the proceeding itself. "Common pleas" meant common civil suits, not admissions of guilt. Researchers working in historical materials should resist reading modern criminal-procedure meaning backward into the term.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term creates navigational problems across time and jurisdiction that are easy to underestimate.
First, the shift in what "pleas" means. In pre-modern sources, pleas of the crown (criminal matters) and common pleas (civil matters) formed the primary structural division of English law. A researcher scanning older treatises or case reporters for "pleas" without understanding this taxonomy will misread the jurisdictional and substantive boundaries of the material.
Second, the court name persists in American jurisdictions with varying scope. Pennsylvania's Court of Common Pleas, for example, is a court of general jurisdiction handling both civil and criminal matters — a significant departure from the English original, which was civil only. Ohio retained the name in its court structure as well. A researcher assuming that any American court labeled "Common Pleas" is a purely civil tribunal will make jurisdictional errors.
Third, Magna Carta's role is not merely historical color. The provision fixing common pleas in a certain place (as opposed to the Court of King's Bench, which could follow the king) was a substantive limitation on royal power and shaped English court organization for centuries. Sources referencing this provision are not being archaic — they are explaining why the Court of Common Pleas developed its distinct identity and jurisdiction.
Fourth, the abolition of the English Court of Common Pleas in 1873 (by the Judicature Act) means English materials divide sharply before and after that date. Post-1873 English sources treat "common pleas" as a historical artifact; pre-1873 sources treat it as an active jurisdictional category. American sources are unaffected by the English abolition and continue to use the court name independently.
Fifth, researchers should not let the encyclopedia entries on modern guilty pleas and plea bargaining (criminal_202, criminal_203) draw them off course. Those entries address a different body of law entirely.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in close agreement on the core definition. All four dictionaries converge on the same foundational distinction: common pleas are civil actions between subjects, as opposed to pleas of the crown. Burrill is the most precise, tracing the term through Bracton and Magna Carta and providing the Latin and Law French equivalents (communia placita; communes plees). Black's (both editions) and Bouvier track the same line of meaning without meaningful divergence.
Bouvier adds the institutional detail that the English Court of Common Pleas consisted of one chief justice and four puisie (puisne) justices, and notes that the chief judge carried the title Chief Justice of Common Pleas — a title Bouvier flags as now obsolete. This is useful for researchers dating and contextualizing judicial titles in English materials.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the American variation in court scope. They write from an English common law frame and assume common pleas jurisdiction is inherently civil. American researchers must supply the corrective that some state courts of common pleas acquired general jurisdiction, including criminal matters, by state constitutional or statutory design. The historical dictionaries also predate (or ignore) the 1873 Judicature Act consolidation, so they describe the English court as if it remains operative.
Burrill's quotation of Magna Carta directly — "Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be held in some certain place" — is genuinely instructive for understanding why the court's fixed character was constitutionally significant, and is worth consulting in the original context.
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Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, several states retain courts named "Court of Common Pleas" (Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Delaware among them), but their jurisdiction varies significantly by state constitution and statute. Pennsylvania's courts of common pleas are courts of general jurisdiction over both civil and criminal matters. Researchers should never assume scope from the name alone; consult the governing state constitution and enabling statutes for each jurisdiction.
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