Definition
Dies datus partibus is a Latin procedural term meaning "a day given to the parties." It refers to the formal grant of an adjournment or continuance in a legal proceeding — the court's act of setting a future date to which the matter is postponed, with both parties bound to appear on that day. The term captures the idea that the court, rather than simply delaying a matter indefinitely, gives the parties a specific day to which the action is carried forward. It is a term of practice rather than of substantive law.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older English and early American legal sources. Researchers encountering it in historical pleading records, court rolls, or common law treatises should understand it as a technical synonym for what modern practice calls a continuance or adjournment. The phrase will not appear in contemporary procedural codes or modern case law; its functional equivalent is governed today by rules of civil or criminal procedure addressing continuances.
The term belongs to a cluster of Latin dies phrases — dies juridicus, dies non juridicus, dies in banco — that structured the medieval and early modern English court calendar. Researchers working in that period must distinguish between these: a dies datus partibus was not simply any court day, but a specifically granted postponement day, meaning the proceeding was already underway or at issue before the grant was made. Confusing it with dies juridicus (a lawful court day generally) or dies in banco (a day for proceedings at the bench, as opposed to in the field or at nisi prius) will produce analytical errors in reading historical pleading sequences.
In corpus research, the phrase is most likely to surface in English common law procedure materials, early American practice manuals that drew on English sources, and Latin-language court records from the medieval through early modern period. It is not a term that generated doctrinal controversy or evolved in meaning; its significance is purely identificatory — knowing what it means allows the researcher to map the procedural posture of a historical case.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines the term concisely as "a day given to the parties to an action; an adjournment or continuance," citing Crabb's English Law. This definition is reliable and complete for its narrow purpose. No substantive variation appears across historical dictionary sources, which is consistent with the term's nature as a fixed procedural label rather than a contested legal concept. Historical dictionaries agree on the core meaning and do not develop it further. The brevity of treatment across sources reflects the term's function: it describes a procedural event, not a legal doctrine, and there is little to argue about once it is identified.
The Crabb citation — Crabb's History of English Law — is characteristic of the sourcing Black's relied on for Latin procedural terms of English common law origin. Researchers should note that Black's does not supply a case citation for this term, which is typical for procedural vocabulary that operated as a matter of practice rather than contested legal principle.
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Jurisdictional Note
Dies datus partibus is a term of English common law procedure and appears in historical sources from that tradition. American courts absorbed it through early reception of English common law, but it was quickly replaced by English-language procedural terminology. It has no operative significance in any modern jurisdiction's procedural rules.
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