Definition
Latin: "This shows to you." A formal introductory phrase used in the plaintiff's count — known as the *intentio* — in certain real actions during the early common law period. The phrase functioned as the opening words through which the plaintiff formally presented the substance of their claim to the court, declaring in effect that the following recitation would demonstrate the basis for the relief sought. It is a term of pleading art, not a substantive legal concept, and belongs entirely to the formulaic language of medieval real property litigation.
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Common Confusion
HOC VOBIS OSTENDIT should not be confused with the substantive pleading it introduced. The phrase is a preamble formula — a structural marker signaling the start of the *intentio* — not itself a statement of legal right or claim. Researchers encountering the phrase in early plea rolls or treatises may initially mistake it for a term of art carrying independent legal significance. It does not; its significance is structural and ceremonial.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a marker of deep antiquity. Its appearance in a source signals that the document or text dates to, or is drawing from, the era of Bracton — roughly the mid-thirteenth century — when real actions followed highly stylized oral and written formulas. Researchers working in early Year Books, plea rolls, or treatises modeled on Bracton will encounter this phrase as a reliable dating and context signal.
The companion form cited by Burrill — the Law French *ceo vous monstre* ("this shows to you") — is functionally identical and serves the same introductory role. Because early legal records frequently shift between Latin and Law French, researchers must recognize both versions as the same formula to avoid treating them as distinct procedural steps or different actions.
The phrase also illustrates why direct translation of Latin pleading formulas can be misleading. "This shows to you" reads as a simple declarative, but in context it operated as a formal threshold statement activating the court's attention to the claim that followed. The legal weight lay not in the words themselves but in their position within the rigid structural sequence of the real action.
By the time of Blackstone and the later common law, real actions had largely fallen into disuse and this formula with them. Any encounter with *hoc vobis ostendit* outside a medieval or early modern source should be treated with suspicion — it may indicate either antiquarian quotation or transcription from an earlier model.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary historical dictionary source for this term, and his entry is brief but precise. He correctly identifies the phrase as the opening of the plaintiff's *intentio* in real actions and ties it to the Bracton period, noting the parallel Law French form *ceo vous monstre*. The fragment he quotes — referencing that "inheritance do descend according to the commendable custom of England" — illustrates the typical subject matter of the real actions in which this formula appeared: disputes over the descent and title of freehold land.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries (Bouvier, Black's early editions, Jacob's Law Dictionary) appear to carry a dedicated entry for this phrase. Its absence from those sources is itself informative: by the time those dictionaries were compiled, the formula had become a historical curiosity rather than a living term of practice. Researchers relying on later dictionaries alone would find no entry and might incorrectly conclude the phrase is obscure invented language rather than authentic medieval pleading formula.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively a product of English common law and has no parallel development in American practice. American courts inherited the common law but discarded the ancient real actions very early in the colonial and post-revolutionary period. The phrase has no operative significance in any current jurisdiction.
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