Definition
Full defense is a formal pleading formula used in common law practice by which a defendant enters a complete and unabbreviated denial of the plaintiff's claim. The complete formula reads: "And the said C. D., by E. F., his attorney, comes and defends the force and injury when and where it shall behoove him, and the damages and whatever else he ought to defend, and says..." The phrase signals that the defendant is putting the plaintiff to full proof of every element of the claim and waiving no procedural rights.
The term also carries a broader, more general meaning: any defense that is complete and unconditional in scope — one that, if successful, defeats the plaintiff's or prosecution's case entirely rather than merely reducing liability or mitigating damages.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry. "Full defense" in ordinary speech suggests a comprehensive or thorough defensive effort, without technical legal content.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No dedicated entry. The component words carry their ordinary senses: "full" meaning complete or entire; "defense" meaning protection or resistance against attack or claim.
The gap matters. In common speech, "full defense" simply means a robust or complete effort to defend. In its technical pleading sense, it was a precise verbal formula with procedural consequences — its presence or absence in a plea affected the defendant's standing before the court. A researcher encountering the phrase in historical pleadings should not read it as merely descriptive.
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Common Confusion
Full defense is sometimes conflated with the concept of an affirmative defense. An affirmative defense concedes certain facts but introduces new matter to justify or excuse the defendant's conduct. Full defense, by contrast, is a denial of the plaintiff's case root and branch — it introduces nothing new, but forces the plaintiff to prove everything. The two concepts operate differently and appear in different procedural postures.
The phrase is also sometimes loosely used in modern commentary to mean any complete or absolute defense (as opposed to a partial defense such as contributory negligence or provocation), which is distinct from its historical pleading-formula meaning.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a creature of common law pleading practice and is rarely encountered in modern American civil procedure, which abolished the old forms of action and their associated formulas. Researchers working with pre-code materials — English common law pleadings, early American state court records, and equity practice before the Field Code reforms of the mid-nineteenth century — will encounter full defense as a live procedural term. In those sources, its presence is not mere boilerplate: it was a deliberate formal act with legal effect.
In modern sources, the phrase survives in two contexts that can trap the inattentive researcher. First, courts and commentators occasionally use "full defense" informally to mean a complete or absolute defense, as distinguished from a partial one. Second, constitutional due process doctrine uses the concept of a full and fair opportunity to present a defense, which is a different idea entirely. Do not conflate these uses.
Researchers moving from modern secondary sources back into historical primary sources should flag that what reads as a loose descriptive phrase in a twentieth-century treatise may be a precise technical formula in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century pleading record.
The encyclopedia cross-references here address the substantive law of self-defense and defense of others — areas where the word "defense" carries its modern criminal law meaning — which is distinct from "full defense" as a pleading formula. Researchers investigating whether a criminal defendant presented a complete affirmative defense at trial should consult those entries; researchers investigating historical pleading form should treat this entry as the starting point.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary preserves the classical pleading formula: "And the said C. D., by E. F., his attorney, comes and defends the force and injury when and where it shall behoove him, and the damages and whatever else he ought to defend, and says..." This formula was distinguished in practice from a half defense, which was an abbreviated entry that could, in some procedural contexts, limit the defendant's rights or signal a more restricted contest of the claim.
Historical dictionaries are consistent on the formal pleading meaning but provide little guidance on the broader modern usage of "full defense" as a synonym for a complete or absolute defense. That broader usage is largely a product of modern legal commentary and is not well-documented in the classical sources. Researchers relying solely on Black's for this term will have the pleading formula but will miss the modern context in which the phrase floats free of its procedural origins.
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Jurisdictional Note
Full defense as a technical pleading formula was a feature of English common law practice adopted in American courts operating under common law forms of action. Its relevance is largely historical in all U.S. jurisdictions following code pleading and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Researchers in jurisdictions that retained older pleading traditions longer — certain Southern and mid-Atlantic states through the mid-twentieth century — may encounter the formula in court records later than its disappearance from majority practice.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Self-Defense — Defense of Others (criminal_123); Self-Defense — Defense of Property (criminal_124). Note: these entries address the substantive criminal law of defense doctrines, not the pleading formula. Relevant for researchers tracing whether a defendant raised a complete affirmative defense at trial.
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