Definition
A Latin term from Roman civil law meaning to eject, cast out, or dispossess a person from possession of land or property. In its passive form, dejectus denotes one who has been ejected. The term appears in the Digest and Institutes of Justinian as the operative verb describing forcible or wrongful dispossession, and was carried into early English legal writing as a synonym for the later, more familiar ejicere.
Common Confusion
DEJICERE vs. EJICERE: These terms are functionally interchangeable in early medieval English legal sources. Bracton uses both words without apparent distinction to describe the same act of dispossession. By the time English common law had crystallized the action of ejectment, ejicere and its derivative ejectment had displaced dejicere almost entirely. Researchers encountering dejicere in Bracton or Fleta should not treat it as a distinct legal concept from ejicere — it is the same idea in variant Latin form. The confusion arises because later legal dictionaries indexed primarily under ejectment and ejicere, leaving dejicere appearing orphaned or archaic.
Why It Matters in Research
The principal research value of this term is philological and historical rather than doctrinal. Dejicere does not survive as an operative legal term in any modern common law jurisdiction — it belongs entirely to the Latin-language layer of English legal writing, roughly the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, where Roman civil law vocabulary was being absorbed into nascent common law doctrine.
Researchers working with Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (folios 166 and 166b specifically) will encounter dejicere as part of his treatment of the possessory assizes and proto-ejectment remedies. The same term appears in Fleta (lib. 4, c. 2), which draws heavily on Bracton. Understanding that dejicere and ejicere are synonyms in these sources prevents a researcher from inferring procedural or substantive distinctions where none exist.
The Digest reference (Dig. 43.16.1) points to the Roman interdict unde vi, which protected against forcible dispossession from land. This is the civil law ancestor of the English possessory action. Researchers tracing the intellectual genealogy of ejectment doctrine — particularly the transition from the assizes of novel disseisin to the later common law action of ejectment — will find dejicere marking the point where Roman concepts of vi dejectus (dispossessed by force) were being translated into English legal thought.
A practical trap: corpus searches for ejectment doctrine in medieval Latin sources that rely solely on ejicere will miss passages where Bracton chose dejicere. Both forms should be included in any search targeting early dispossession doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and its treatment is characteristically precise. Burrill correctly identifies the Digest and Institutes citations, notes Bracton's interchangeable usage, and cross-references Fleta — the three essential primary sources for this term. The entry is short because the term's legal life is short and narrow.
What Burrill does not elaborate on is the doctrinal content carried by the term: the Roman interdict unde vi, which Dig. 43.16.1 governs, was a summary remedy for violent dispossession that required neither a showing of title nor a full possessory inquiry. This background is not legally operative in modern research but matters for understanding why early English writers found Roman dispossession vocabulary useful when constructing possessory remedies outside the writ of right. Later historical dictionaries, including Black's, do not carry a separate entry for dejicere, subsuming its content entirely under ejectment and ejicere.
Jurisdictional Note
Dejicere has no operative force in any modern jurisdiction. It appears exclusively in historical and comparative law contexts. Researchers in civilian jurisdictions tracing Roman law influence on dispossession remedies may find the Digest citation (Dig. 43.16.1) of substantive relevance; common law researchers will encounter the term only in medieval primary sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Ejectment
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Roman Law Foundations of Common Law Remedies
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Bracton and the Romanization of English Law