Definition
De ohampertia is an archaic Latin writ directed to the justices of the Court of Common Pleas (the bench), commanding enforcement of the statutes against champertors. The writ's function was procedural and coercive: it triggered judicial action against those who had violated the law of champerty by improperly financing or trafficking in another party's litigation in exchange for a share of the proceeds.
The name derives directly from the underlying offense it addressed. "De" signals the subject matter of the writ; "ohampertia" (also rendered "champertia" in variant spellings) designates champerty. The writ belongs to the broader family of original writs that carried royal commands to courts to act on a specific legal grievance.
Common Confusion
De ohampertia is easily conflated with the substantive law of champerty itself, but the two are distinct instruments. Champerty (or champertia) names the offense — the agreement by an outsider to fund litigation in return for a share of the recovery. De ohampertia names the procedural writ that activated judicial enforcement of the champerty statutes. A researcher encountering the writ in a historical record is looking at enforcement machinery, not at the underlying transaction that constituted the wrong. The distinction matters when tracing whether a historical source is analyzing the offense, the remedy, or the court's jurisdiction over champertors.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is nearly invisible in modern legal literature and will not appear in contemporary reporters or statutory compilations. Its relevance is strictly historical, and researchers will encounter it only in medieval and early modern English records, original writ registers, and secondary sources treating the common law of champerty.
Several research traps are worth flagging:
Spelling instability is significant. Historical sources render the writ variously as de ohampertia, de champertia, and de champertu. The "oh-" spelling in Black's Supplemental edition appears to reflect either a scribal convention or a transcription artifact from the Registrum Brevium (Reg. orig.) tradition. Researchers searching manuscript or digitized writ registers should use variant spellings as parallel search terms.
The writ is referenced in two foundational sources: the Registrum Omnium Brevium (the Register of Original Writs) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. Both are pre-modern English practitioner texts describing the forms and subjects of original writs. Neither is a statutory source; they are descriptive compilations of writ practice. A researcher relying solely on Black's entry should consult these primary sources directly to understand the procedural context, conditions for issuance, and the scope of courts that could receive the writ.
The relationship between de ohampertia and the champerty statutes is not self-explanatory. English champerty legislation developed through a series of statutes in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (the Statutes of Westminster and related enactments). The writ was the instrument that brought those statutes to bear on a specific court at a specific time. Understanding the writ requires understanding which statute it was enforcing and in what period, since the law of champerty evolved across that span.
Jurisdictional context matters here in a way that is historically specific. The writ ran to "the justices of the bench" — meaning the Court of Common Pleas, not King's Bench or the Exchequer. This placement has implications for how disputes about champerty were channeled in the medieval English court system.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the only dictionary entry identified for this term. The entry is brief: it defines the writ as directed to the justices of the bench to enforce the champerty statutes, and cites Reg. orig. 183 and Fitzh. Nat. Brev. 172 as authority.
The entry is accurate as far as it goes but offers no procedural detail, no account of conditions for issuance, and no discussion of how the writ interacted with the substantive law of champerty. It functions as a pointer to the primary sources rather than a full treatment. For any research purpose beyond identifying what the writ was called, the cited sources must be consulted directly.
No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus carries an independent entry for this writ. The absence is unsurprising: de ohampertia appears in the historical writ literature as a technical form rather than a frequently litigated concept, and most legal dictionaries folded its substance under entries for "champerty" or "champerty and maintenance."
Jurisdictional Note
De ohampertia is a feature of historical English common law and has no direct counterpart in modern American, Commonwealth, or civil law jurisdictions. Modern champerty law, where it survives, is addressed through contract doctrine, professional conduct rules, and in some jurisdictions statute — not through original writs.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry addresses champerty, maintenance, or the historical writ system directly. The identified encyclopedia matches — covering de facto parentage, defective incorporation, and appellate standards of review — share the Latin prefix "de" but are substantively unrelated to this writ. No cross-reference is warranted.