Definition
Dedimus potestatem de at (from the Latin "we have given power to appoint an attorney") is a historical common law writ by which royal authority was delegated to allow a party to a legal proceeding to appoint an attorney to appear and act on their behalf in court. The writ's full form is commonly rendered as dedimus potestatem de attornato faciendo — "we have given power for making an attorney" — and it operated as the formal legal mechanism through which a litigant could authorize representation without being personally present.
Before Parliament intervened, no party could appear by attorney in the royal courts without this writ, issued under crown authority. The writ thus stood as the gateway to delegated legal representation: absent the dedimus potestatem, a defendant who failed to appear in person risked default, regardless of any private arrangement with a lawyer.
Common Confusion
The Bouvier source entry associates this writ with a closely related instrument, the writ de attornato faciendo (sometimes described through the torno faciendo form). These terms are frequently run together in historical sources and refer to overlapping but distinct instruments. Dedimus potestatem de at is the crown's grant of delegated authority to authorize an attorney; de attornato faciendo is the writ commanding or permitting the appointment itself. After the Statute of Westminster 2 (1285, 13 Edw. I, c. 10) generalized the right to appoint attorneys in most pleaded actions, both writs declined in practical significance, but the terminology persisted in older procedural treatises and records in ways that can mislead researchers.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to a cluster of obsolete procedural writs that shaped the early history of legal representation. Researchers encounter it primarily in three contexts:
First, in pre-Reformation English court records and Year Books, where the writ appears as a live procedural step. Its presence or absence in a record can indicate the procedural posture of a case and whether representation was formally authorized.
Second, in Bouvier's and similar nineteenth-century American law dictionaries, where the term is catalogued as a historical artifact rather than an active instrument. American practice never relied on this writ in the same way, having inherited the post-Westminster 2 common law under which the right to appear by attorney was generally presumed. Researchers reading Bouvier's entries on attorney appointment should note that the dictionary is describing the English procedural baseline that American practice had already moved past.
Third, the writ illuminates the conceptual foundation of attorney authority. Modern doctrines of agency, appearance, and the scope of an attorney's authority to bind a client have roots in precisely this question — by what power does a lawyer act for another in court? The dedimus potestatem answers that question in its medieval form: royal delegation. Understanding this lineage helps when reading early treatises on agency or attorney-client relations that invoke the older vocabulary.
Trap for researchers: The abbreviated form "de at" in the full term name is a truncation of "de attornato." Historical sources vary in how they abbreviate or render the writ's name, and the same instrument may appear under several compressed Latin forms in court rolls and procedural manuals.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary addresses this writ indirectly through its entry on de attornato faciendo and associated forms, noting that before the Statute of Westminster 2, appearance by attorney required crown authorization. Bouvier correctly identifies the statute as the turning point after which all persons impleaded could make an attorney in most pleas. What Bouvier's treatment does not fully convey is how long the older writ vocabulary persisted in formal usage even after the substantive rule changed — practitioners and courts continued to invoke the dedimus potestatem framework in equity and chancery contexts well after it had become largely ceremonial in common law courts.
Historical dictionaries generally agree on the core meaning but diverge on scope: some treat dedimus potestatem as exclusively an attorney-appointment instrument, while others describe a broader family of dedimus potestatem writs used to delegate judicial functions (such as taking depositions or oaths) to commissioners. Researchers should not assume that every dedimus potestatem writ in a historical record refers to attorney appointment — the phrase "we have given power" was applied to several forms of delegated royal or judicial authority.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is an artifact of English common law procedure and has no direct counterpart in American practice. American jurisdictions inherited the post-Westminster 2 rule that parties may appear by attorney as a general right, and the writ mechanism was never transplanted. Researchers working in early colonial records may encounter references to the concept, but they reflect English procedural vocabulary rather than operative American instruments.