Definition
Latin. "And thereupon [or thereof] he prays judgment." A formal concluding clause appearing at the end of a pleading, by which the pleading party requests the court to render judgment in their favor. The phrase signals the end of the substantive pleading and functions as a formal demand for judicial resolution based on the matter alleged.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a structural marker in historical common law pleading records, not a substantive legal concept. Researchers working in medieval or early modern English court records, plea rolls, or pleading books will encounter it as a routine terminal formula — its presence confirms that a formal pleading unit has concluded and a prayer for judgment follows. Because it is a formulaic phrase rather than a doctrine, it does not evolve substantively; its significance is diagnostic.
Researchers should be aware that the phrase appears in both Latin and vernacular translation in historical sources. By the period of modernized pleading forms, it was typically rendered in English as "and thereof he prays judgment" or similar variants, often abbreviated. Failure to recognize the Latin form in early records may cause a researcher to misread the structural boundary of a pleading.
The phrase has no meaningful life in modern procedural law. Post-code pleading reforms abolished the rigid formulaic structure of common law pleading, and with it the necessity of this concluding clause. Researchers searching modern legal databases will not find it in contemporary practice; its utility is confined entirely to historical pleading records, treatises on common law procedure, and legal history scholarship.
Within the Law Mind corpus, this term connects outward to the broader mechanics of common law pleading — the system of declarations, pleas, replications, and rejoinders — rather than to any discrete substantive doctrine. It is most useful as a reading aid when working through primary sources from the medieval period through the eighteenth century.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Black's second edition are in close agreement, differing only in minor transcription detail (Burrill gives Bracton folio 57b; Black gives folio 570, likely a variant reference or transcription divergence). Both trace the phrase to Bracton, placing its use in English legal practice as early as the thirteenth century — a notable lineage that underscores its deep roots in the common law pleading tradition. Both also note that the phrase was "literally translated in the modern forms," confirming that its function survived the transition from Latin to English pleading without substantive alteration.
Neither dictionary offers analytical depth beyond the formula's meaning and antiquity, which is appropriate: the phrase carries no contested legal content. What the historical dictionaries do not address is the phrase's disappearance from practice following procedural reform, nor do they situate it within the broader architecture of common law pleading for readers unfamiliar with that system. Researchers relying solely on these entries will have the translation but will need supplementary sources — Crabb's History of English Law (cited by both Burrill and Black) or Blackstone's Commentaries on pleading — to understand the procedural context in which the phrase operated.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is a product of English common law pleading and carried into American colonial and early republic practice. Its use was never uniform across equity proceedings, which followed different pleading conventions. Post-reform American jurisdictions abandoned it entirely with the adoption of code pleading in the nineteenth century.