Definition
Et unde dicit is a Latin phrase of Medieval English pleading meaning "and whereupon he says." The phrase functioned as a transitional formula in formal court pleadings, marking the point at which a party — typically the plaintiff — shifted from narrating the factual basis of a complaint to stating the legal claim or conclusion that followed from those facts. In essence, it introduced the legal consequence the pleader drew from the circumstances previously alleged.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with Year Book materials, early common law plea rolls, or treatises on common law pleading will encounter et unde dicit as part of the highly stylized pleading formulas that governed formal court practice from the medieval period through the early modern era. Its significance is almost entirely procedural and formulaic rather than substantive — the phrase signals a structural moment in a plea, not a legal doctrine in its own right.
Because Year Book Latin and Law French pleading was governed by rigid conventions, deviations from expected formulas could result in a plea being held defective. A researcher reading early plea rolls or Year Book reports should understand et unde dicit as a structural marker: it tells you that what precedes it is the narrative foundation and what follows is the legal claim drawn from that foundation. Missing or misreading this transition can distort interpretation of the pleading's structure.
The phrase appears in the Year Books of Edward II's reign, a period when common law pleading forms were actively developing and hardening into the more fixed formulas that characterized later practice. Researchers tracing the evolution of pleading — from the relatively fluid narrations of the early Year Books toward the more rigid system codified in later pleading manuals — should note that phrases like et unde dicit represent early instances of standardization.
This term has no meaningful post-medieval presence in primary legal sources. It is essentially a dead formula, useful today only for reading and interpreting historical records. Researchers should not expect to find it in equity pleading, statutory forms, or modern procedural documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry concisely: "L. Lat. And whereupon he says," with a citation to the Year Books of Michaelmas Term, 1 Edward II. Burrill does not elaborate on the formula's function within the pleading structure, and no other shelf dictionary in the present corpus covers this term. The Year Book citation is consistent with what is known about the period: the first decade of Edward II's reign (1307–1327) falls within the florescence of Year Book reporting, and pleading formulas recorded there represent some of the earliest systematic evidence of common law procedure in action.
The entry in Burrill is immediately followed by reference to "Euangelies" (the Gospels, in the Law French of Britton), which confirms that these entries appear in sequence alphabetically and that et unde dicit received no extended treatment even in historical dictionaries. This reflects its status as a purely functional transition phrase — notable enough to record, but not requiring legal analysis.
No treatise in the Law Mind corpus appears to have given extended treatment to this precise formula. Researchers needing broader context for Year Book pleading conventions should consult materials on common law pleading generally, including works dealing with the writ system, the forms of action, and the narration and count.