Definition
De quibus (Latin: "of which") is a formal Latin phrase that appeared in the original writ of entry, a common law real property action used to recover possession of land. In its procedural role, de quibus designated a specific form of the writ of entry based on which Latin words the writ's operative language turned. When the writ alleged that the tenant held the land through a person "of whom" the demandant had not consented to a transfer, the phrase de quibus supplied the grammatical pivot of the writ's claim. The writ was consequently styled a writ of entry "in the quibus" (or "in the quo" when singular), distinguishing it from other degrees of the writ that used different pronoun forms to describe how far removed the wrongful possession had become.
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Common Confusion
De quibus is sometimes encountered alongside the related phrase in quibus, and the two are easily conflated. The distinction is grammatical rather than substantive: de quibus ("of which") and in quibus ("in which") both appeared in writs of entry, but the choice of preposition determined which degree of the writ was in play and how many removes of possession separated the original wrong from the current tenant. A researcher finding either phrase in a historical pleading record should attend carefully to the full Latin clause, not merely the pronoun form, to identify the precise procedural posture.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily of significance to researchers working in English legal history, particularly the history of real actions and the common law forms of action before the reforms of the nineteenth century. The writ of entry was abolished in England along with the other real actions by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and the Common Law Procedure Act 1852, so de quibus has no continuing procedural life in modern practice.
Researchers encountering this phrase in historical plea rolls, year books, or early treatises should understand it as a technical marker of procedural degree within the writ of entry system, not as a substantive term of property law. Misreading it as a general Latin qualifier — rather than as a term of art anchoring a specific writ form — can lead to misidentification of the action being pursued.
The reference in Black's to Reeve's History of English Law points researchers toward one of the cleaner nineteenth-century expositions of the writ of entry system. Reeve's work, along with Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, remains the primary secondary-source apparatus for parsing the gradations of the writ of entry and the Latin phrases that distinguished them. Corpus searches for de quibus in Law Mind materials will surface predominantly in treatise excerpts, historical pleading forms, and doctrinal histories of real property procedure rather than in case law or statutory materials.
Because Black's 2nd Edition entry is compressed to a single sentence, researchers should treat it as a pointer rather than a full account. The phrase only becomes intelligible in the context of the broader writ of entry framework, which is where the substantive research work lies.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines de quibus tersely as "of which," identifying it as formal language in the simple writ of entry and noting that the writ was called "in the quo" or "in the quibus" as a result. The sole citation is to Reeve's History of English Law, volume 3. No other historical dictionary sources in the Law Mind corpus carry a dedicated entry for this phrase.
The sparseness of the historical dictionary record accurately reflects the term's status: de quibus is procedural vocabulary internal to a specific and long-abolished writ form. It did not generate independent doctrine or travel beyond its procedural context. Researchers should not expect to find it defined in equity-side authorities or in American sources, as the writ of entry was never fully naturalized in American jurisdictions that departed early from the English real action system.
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Jurisdictional Note
The writ of entry, and with it the procedural significance of de quibus, was operative in English common law courts and in some early American colonial jurisdictions that adopted English real actions. By the mid-nineteenth century it had been abolished or had fallen into disuse on both sides of the Atlantic. The phrase carries no live procedural meaning in any current jurisdiction.
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