Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning impeachment — the formal accusation or challenge brought against a person, particularly in a legal proceeding. In medieval English legal usage, empeschement referred broadly to any obstruction, hindrance, or formal charge that impeded a party's legal standing or rights. It appears in early common law texts as the Law French equivalent of the Latin impetitio and the English "impeachment," carrying the sense of bringing a challenge against a person before a legal tribunal.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational marker, not an operative legal concept. Researchers will encounter empeschement primarily in medieval Year Books, early plea rolls, and treatises drawing on Law French sources. Its significance is almost entirely historical: the term signals that the surrounding text is drawing from pre-modern common law materials, often Littleton or Bracton-era sources, and should be read within that context.
The critical research trap is confusing the archaic procedural sense — a general impediment or challenge — with the modern constitutional sense of impeachment as a legislative removal mechanism. These two meanings share etymology but diverged substantially over centuries. When Burrill cross-references Littleton, section 76, the passage concerns the rights of tenants not to be impleaded (i.e., not to have legal actions brought against them), a narrower procedural sense that has no direct modern analog in impeachment doctrine.
Researchers working in Law Mind sources should treat empeschement as a variant spelling cluster. Historical sources may render the same concept as empeschement, empechement, empêchement, or impeachment depending on period and scribe. Searches limited to a single spelling will miss cognate appearances. When the term appears in primary sources, the surrounding Law French context — particularly the verb form empleder (to implead) — often clarifies which procedural sense is intended.
The Burrill entry itself is minimal and derivative, pointing researchers toward Kelham's glossary of Norman French as the authoritative secondary source for this term's range of meanings in medieval legal texts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides only a brief entry, defining empeschement as the Law French equivalent of impeachment and citing Kelham. The entry's primary value is the Littleton citation (section 76), which anchors the term in the feudal tenure context: the passage concerns a tenant's right to hold without being subject to certain legal challenges. This suggests empeschement in early common law carried a meaning closer to "legal impediment" or "obstruction of right" than to the modern legislative sense of impeachment.
Burrill places the closely related term empler (to fulfil) in the same passage, a juxtaposition that reflects how Burrill organized Law French terms by proximity in sources rather than by conceptual relation. Researchers should not infer a substantive connection between empeschement and empler beyond their shared appearance in Burrill's editorial sequence.
No broader synthesis across multiple historical dictionaries is possible from the available sources; Burrill alone covers this term. The absence of this term from later legal dictionaries — including Black's Law Dictionary — reflects its obsolescence as operative vocabulary well before the modern era.
Jurisdictional Note
Empeschement is exclusively a term of early English common law, derived from Anglo-Norman French. It has no operative use in any modern common law jurisdiction. Its appearance in American legal sources is limited to historical quotation or scholarly commentary on medieval English law.