Definition
En barre is a Law French phrase meaning "in bar." It denotes a pleading posture or procedural stance in which a party stands in bar of an action — that is, opposes or blocks the opposing party's claim by interposing a bar to its prosecution. To plead en barre is to raise a defense that, if sustained, defeats the action entirely rather than merely delaying it.
The term is closely associated with the practice of oral pleading at the bar of the court in early common law procedure, where parties or their counsel would present defenses in open court. A plea en barre is substantively equivalent to what modern practice calls a plea in bar.
Common Confusion
En barre should not be confused with the distinct procedural concept of nonsuit or with a demurrer. A plea en barre contests the merits or vitiates the plaintiff's right to bring the action; a demurrer admits the facts but contests their legal sufficiency; a nonsuit terminates proceedings without a judgment on the merits. All three can defeat an action, but they operate differently and appear differently in historical records. Researchers reading Year Book materials should identify which mechanism is at work before drawing conclusions about the substantive law being applied.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Year Book sources and early common law materials from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Researchers encountering en barre in historical records should understand that it is not a term of substantive law but a procedural descriptor — it tells you where in the pleading sequence a party stood and what type of defense was being interposed.
The key navigational trap: do not confuse the procedural posture described by en barre with the substantive grounds of the bar itself. A source citing a plea en barre tells you the form; you must look to the specific defense pleaded to understand the substance. The Year Book citation in Burrill (46. 8. 12. 2. T. 8 Edw. III. 6) anchors the term firmly in the reign of Edward III, placing it in the era of formal oral pleading before the rise of written pleadings under the later common law system.
Researchers working in early equity materials should note that the concept of pleading in bar traveled into equity practice as well, where a defendant might file what was called a plea in bar to an equity bill — functionally analogous, though the procedural rules differed from common law.
Because en barre is Law French, it will appear in anglicized variants across sources. Expect to find "in bar," "plea in bar," and the Latin in barram as functional equivalents depending on the period and the scribe's conventions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry identified for this term and treats it with characteristic economy: a translation ("in bar"), a Year Book citation, and nothing more. This brevity is itself informative — by Burrill's time (mid-nineteenth century), Law French procedural terminology had largely passed into English equivalents, and en barre required no extended treatment because its functional successor, "plea in bar," was thoroughly established. Burrill's entry preserves the term as a historical artifact rather than live vocabulary.
No significant divergence exists across historical dictionaries here because the term's scope is so narrow. The analytical weight falls not on the definition itself — which is uncontested — but on understanding the procedural world in which it operated: oral pleading at the common law bar, Year Book records as the primary documentary evidence, and the gradual displacement of Law French by English in legal proceedings following the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1731.