Definition
A writ of medieval English real property law that lay for a person who, having previously recovered lands or tenements through a praecipe quod reddat action (either by the defendant's default or by reddition — a voluntary surrender), was subsequently disseised a second time by the same former disseisor. The writ provided an expedited remedy for the aggrieved party, sparing them the burden of initiating a full new action from the beginning when the wrongdoer had simply repeated the original dispossession.
The name reflects its purpose: de post disseisina translates roughly as "concerning post-disseisin" — that is, a disseisin occurring after a prior recovery.
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Common Confusion
De post disseisina is sometimes confused with the general writ of novel disseisin (assisa novae disseisinae), which lay for any recent dispossession regardless of prior history between the parties. The distinction is material: de post disseisina specifically required a prior recovery against the same disseisor through a praecipe quod reddat proceeding. It was not a general remedy for dispossession but a targeted writ for repeated wrongdoing by an already-adjudicated defendant. Researchers should also note that Rapalje & Lawrence's entry conflates or runs together the de post disseisina entry with the entry for de novo, an apparent typographical or binding error in the source, and should not be read to suggest any doctrinal relationship between the two writs.
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Why It Matters in Research
De post disseisina is a purely historical term, obsolete as a living legal remedy and encountered almost exclusively in pre-modern English real property materials and treatises on the old forms of action. Researchers will find it surfacing in:
— Registrum Brevium (Register of Writs) materials, where it appears as a recognized form alongside other real actions;
— Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, the primary practitioner's reference for identifying the appropriate writ, which catalogues de post disseisina among the real actions available for land recovery;
— secondary treatments of the old real actions in Blackstone, Reeves, and Stephen's Pleading.
The chief research trap is terminological fragmentation. Medieval and early modern sources spell and abbreviate the writ inconsistently — post disseisin, de post disseisina, and writ of post-disseisin all refer to the same instrument. Historical indices may not cross-reference all variants.
A second trap: the writ belongs to the now-abolished class of real actions, swept away in England by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and its successors, and never transplanted meaningfully into American practice. American law reporters and digests will not contain it as a live remedy. Any researcher encountering it in American materials is almost certainly reading either a historical survey, a treatise on common law pleading, or a court opinion discussing the origins of property doctrine.
The connection to praecipe quod reddat is essential context. De post disseisina could not be invoked unless the first recovery had proceeded through that specific form — it was not available to plaintiffs who had recovered by other means. This procedural dependency means the writ makes little sense in isolation; understanding it requires working knowledge of the praecipe quod reddat and the broader taxonomy of real actions.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) gives nearly identical definitions, describing the writ as lying for one who recovered by praecipe quod reddat "on default, or reddition" and was again disseised by the former disseisor. Both editions cite the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig. 208) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (190) as primary authority — the standard citations for writ-form verification in this period. The definitions are reliable as far as they go but are summary in nature, providing the essential elements without elaborating the procedural history or the writ's relationship to the broader system of real actions.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is unfortunately garbled in the available source, the definition running into material from the adjacent de novo entry. It cannot be relied upon for this term and should be disregarded in favor of the Black's entries and the primary sources Black's cites.
No historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus provides extended treatment. For substantive analysis beyond the bare definition, researchers must go to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium directly, or to Blackstone's Commentaries Book III, which surveys the real actions as a system.
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Jurisdictional Note
De post disseisina is a form of action specific to the common law of England and was effectively extinguished by nineteenth-century English procedural reform. It was not adopted as a distinct writ in American jurisdictions, which either inherited simplified versions of the real actions or abolished them entirely through early statutory reform. The term has no operative force in any current jurisdiction.
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