COMMUNIA PLACITA - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

COMMUNIA PLACITAAuthored

The Law Mind • 748 words

Definition

Communia placita (Latin: "common pleas") is a term from old English law referring to civil actions brought between one subject and another — ordinary civil litigation, as distinguished from pleas of the crown (placita coronae), which were criminal or quasi-criminal proceedings initiated on behalf of the sovereign. The term names the category of legal business that concerned private parties rather than the king's direct interests.

The maxim drawn from this concept — Communia placita non sequantur curiam nostram, sed teneantur in aliquo loco certo ("Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be held in some certain place") — gave the term constitutional significance in English legal history. This principle, embedded in Magna Carta, anchored civil litigation to a fixed court rather than allowing it to follow the itinerant royal court, and it became the foundation for the Court of Common Pleas as a distinct institution.

Common Confusion

Communia placita is easily conflated with placita coronae (pleas of the crown). The distinction is fundamental: communia placita are civil disputes between private subjects; placita coronae are proceedings in which the crown is a party or has a direct interest, encompassing criminal matters and certain royal prerogatives. In historical sources, the two categories appear as a matched pair defining the entire jurisdiction of the English common law courts. Researchers who encounter one term should expect the other nearby.

Why It Matters in Research

This term is primarily a term of historical English legal architecture, not a living concept in modern practice. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century sources — Year Books, Bracton, Fleta, Glanvill, and the Regula Originalia — and in later commentaries explaining the origins of the Court of Common Pleas.

The key research trap is anachronism. Modern "common pleas" courts in American jurisdictions (Pennsylvania and Ohio are prominent examples) carry this name as a historical inheritance, but the term in those contexts has no substantive connection to the medieval classification. A researcher finding communia placita in a historical English treatise and then searching American case law under "common pleas" will be following a naming coincidence, not a legal lineage.

The Magna Carta dimension matters for constitutional history research. The fixed-place requirement embedded in the communia placita maxim is one of the earliest textual commitments to institutional separation within English adjudication. Researchers tracing the history of judicial independence, court structure, or due process antecedents should note that this term sits at that origin point.

Burrill's citation to Bracton (fol. 115b) and the Regula Originalia (187b) points researchers toward the primary sources. Bracton's treatment of the distinction between common pleas and crown pleas is foundational; the Regula Originalia provides procedural context for how the classification operated in writ practice.

Historical Dictionary Support

The three source dictionaries present consistent, complementary definitions. All three agree on the core meaning: civil actions between subjects, opposed to pleas of the crown. Burrill's entry is the most developed, including the full Latin maxim, primary source citations to Bracton and the Regula Originalia, and the associated maxim communis error facit jus — though the latter is a separate legal principle that appears in Burrill's entry as a neighboring entry, not as an extension of communia placita itself.

Black's first and second editions track closely, offering the same essential definition without the depth of Burrill's citations. None of the historical dictionaries address the Magna Carta connection explicitly in the communia placita entry, though Burrill's Latin maxim implicitly invokes it. Researchers relying solely on the dictionary definitions will miss the constitutional significance of the fixed-court requirement; that analysis requires going to the primary sources Burrill cites and to Coke's commentary in the Institutes.

No dictionary source engages with the term's later reception in American court naming conventions, an understandable omission given the dictionaries' English focus.

Jurisdictional Note

As a term of art, communia placita is specific to historical English common law. Its functional descendants — civil jurisdiction over private disputes — exist in every common law system, but the term itself does not appear in modern statutory or procedural codes. In the United States, several states retain "Court of Common Pleas" as a court name, but this is purely nominal inheritance, not substantive doctrinal continuity.

COMMUNIA PLACITAmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Lat. In old English law. Common pleas or actions; those between common persons, i. e. between one subject and another, as distinguished from placita coronæ, pleas of the crown, or criminal actions. Reg. Orig. 187 b. Bract. fol. 115 b. Communia placita non sequantur curiam nostram, sed Communis error facit jus. Common error teneantur in aliquo loco certo. Common makes law. 4 Inst. 240. Noy's Max. 32, pleas shall not follow our court, but shall max. 27. Common error goeth for a law. be held in some certain place. Mag. Charta, Finch's Law, b. 1, c. 3, num. 54. Common 9 Hen. III. c. 11. Id. Joh. c. 17. F. N. error sometimes passes current as law B. 24 D, note. In the original articles of Broom's Max. 99, 100,[104]. A common Magna Charta, (c. 8,) the passage reads: error may, in some cases, pass current as Ut communia placita non sequantur curiam law. Thus, a practice which has been domini regis, sed assignentur in aliquo generally observed in a state for a great certo loco. This provision is generally conlength of time, without objection or quessidered as fixing the origin of the English tion, though it possibly might have origicourt of Common Pleas. But, according nally been impeached, will be upheld in to Lord Hale, it rather fixed the distinction law, if the public good require it. This between the King's Bench and the Common Bench, as to the point of communia placita. For before this, common pleas were frequently held in the King's Bench. Hale's Hist. Com. Law, ch. 7. Communia 458. 2 Hilliard's Real Prop. 268. But placita inter subditos, ex jure nostro, quod commune vocant, in hoc disceptantur: Common pleas between subjects are determined in this [court], according to our law which they call common. Camd. Brit. 113. See Common Pleas, Common Bench.