Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "say over." Dites ouster was the form of words used in the Year Books to award a respondeas ouster — the procedural judgment directing a defendant who had pleaded a dilatory plea (such as a plea to jurisdiction or in abatement) and lost to plead over, that is, to answer further on the merits. The phrase itself was not a substantive ruling but a formulaic command marking the transition from a failed preliminary plea to the next stage of pleading.
Common Confusion
Dites ouster is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with respondeas ouster itself, but the two are distinct. Respondeas ouster is the judgment or legal ruling — the court's decision that a dilatory plea has failed and that the defendant must answer over. Dites ouster is the verbal form, the actual words by which that judgment was pronounced or recorded in the Year Books. One is the substance; the other is the formula. Researchers reading Year Book entries should treat the phrase as the signal that a respondeas ouster has been awarded, not as an independent procedural concept requiring separate analysis.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a procedural marker embedded in medieval common law pleading. Researchers encountering it in Year Book sources or early abridgments will find it inseparable from the doctrine of respondeas ouster, which it formally invoked. The phrase appears in its natural habitat in the Year Books of Edward III's reign, and its presence signals a specific moment in the pleading sequence: the court has rejected a dilatory plea and is compelling the defendant to plead to the substance of the action.
Because dites ouster is a purely formulaic expression — a set-phrase command rather than a term of substantive doctrine — it does not evolve or acquire independent legal meaning over time. It drops from use as Law French fades from English court records in the seventeenth century. Researchers working in post-Stuart sources will not encounter the phrase, though the procedural mechanism it commanded (pleading over after a failed dilatory plea) persists under different names. Do not expect coverage of this term in American sources or post-Blackstone treatises; it belongs to the Year Book era.
The primary research value of identifying this phrase lies in locating the surrounding procedural context: what dilatory plea was rejected, on what grounds, and what the defendant subsequently pleaded on the merits. The phrase itself is the connective tissue; the substance lies on either side of it.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — give essentially the same entry: the Law French gloss ("say over"), the functional description (the form of awarding a respondeas ouster), and a Year Book citation. Black's both editions cite M. 6 Edw. III. 49; Burrill cites M. 5 Edw. III. 49 — a minor divergence in citation that likely reflects a transcription variation rather than a substantive disagreement about the term's meaning or usage. None of the three sources elaborate beyond the bare definition, which is appropriate: the term is a formula, not a doctrine, and no further elaboration is warranted. Historical sources are consistent and complete for the narrow purpose the term serves.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Respondeas Ouster; Dilatory Pleas; Year Books (English Legal Sources)