Definition
De pace infracto is a Latin legal phrase meaning "of (or concerning) the peace broken" or "of breach of the peace." It functioned as a descriptive phrase in the titles and writs of historical common law proceedings concerned with breaches of the king's peace. The phrase identifies the subject matter of an action or writ — namely, that a violation of the public peace has occurred — and appears most commonly in Latin formulae associated with writs, indictments, and pleading records from the medieval and early modern English legal tradition.
The term is not a standalone cause of action but a classificatory label, orienting a legal instrument toward the category of peace-breaking offenses. Actions bearing this designation fell within the broad jurisdiction over public order that the Crown maintained through its courts, particularly the courts of common pleas, king's bench, and the justices of the peace.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter de pace infracto primarily in Latin writs, early English plea rolls, and treatises from the medieval through early modern periods, where Latin was the formal language of legal record. The phrase is a fragment of a larger legal formula rather than a complete term of art, and its meaning is fully understood only in context — as part of a writ title, pleading caption, or procedural heading.
The critical research trap is treating the phrase as equivalent to the modern substantive offense of "breach of the peace." The phrase is procedural and descriptive in character; it tells you what category of matter a writ addresses, not what elements a prosecutor must prove. The modern offense of breach of the peace has a distinct doctrinal history and a developed body of statutory and common law definition that cannot be read backward into this Latin phrase without distortion.
Corpus researchers working in pre-1733 English legal records (when Latin was still mandatory in court proceedings) should expect to find the phrase embedded in longer formulaic strings. After the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730 (4 Geo. 2, c. 26), which required English to be used in legal proceedings in England and Wales, Latin phrases of this kind recede sharply from operative legal instruments and survive mainly in historical commentary and scholarly treatises.
Connections within the Law Mind corpus run primarily through breach of the peace as a substantive concept, through writ practice generally, and through the historical jurisdiction of justices of the peace over public order offenses.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary offers the only coverage among the shelf sources, translating de pace infracto tersely as "peace broken; of breach of the peace." The entry is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of Latin law phrases: it renders the translation accurately but provides no further procedural or historical context.
The brevity here reflects both the nature of the phrase — it is a fragment, not a doctrine — and a broader limitation of historical legal dictionaries when handling Latin formulary language. Researchers should not interpret the thinness of dictionary coverage as evidence that the phrase was obscure; Latin peace-related writs were standard instruments, and the phrase appears across a wide range of historical records. The dictionaries simply indexed it at the level of translation rather than doctrinal analysis.
No significant divergence or evolution is traceable within the dictionary record for this phrase, because it is essentially frozen in its classical Latin form. Its meaning did not shift over time; what shifted was the frequency of its use as Latin fell out of mandatory legal practice.
Jurisdictional Note
De pace infracto is a phrase of English common law origin. It does not appear as a term of art in American legal practice, where breach of the peace developed independently under statutory and constitutional frameworks from the colonial period onward. American legal dictionaries and records rarely employ the Latin phrase.