IMPETITIO

3 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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IMPETITIOAuthored
The Law Mind • 865 words
Definition
A Latin term from old English law with several overlapping procedural meanings, all sharing the core sense of a formal legal accusation, claim, or demand made against another party. Burrill identifies the following senses in use across medieval and early modern English legal sources: 1. An accusation, charge, or impeachment — the broadest sense, covering any formal legal accusation brought against a person. 2. A calling to account or holding liable — the sense of prosecuting another for an alleged wrong or damage, particularly in actions sounding in waste or trespass. 3. A demand — a formal legal claim, as in a pleading or writ. 4. A suit — the commencement or prosecution of legal proceedings, as used in Glanvill. 5. A judicial claim or interruption by suit — the obstruction of another's possession or right through the institution of legal proceedings. The most practically significant compound form is IMPETITIO VASTI — impeachment of waste — which refers to the proceeding by which a landlord or reversioner called a tenant to account for waste committed on the property. This usage connects impetitio directly to one of the most frequently litigated property doctrines in early English real property law.
Common Confusion
Impetitio should not be conflated with IMPEACHMENT in its modern constitutional or evidentiary senses. The Latin root and the old English law usage reflect a far broader procedural concept — any formal accusation, demand, or suit — rather than the specific political or testimonial procedures that now travel under the label "impeachment." The compound impetitio vasti (impeachment of waste) survived in English and American legal writing well into the nineteenth century in property and landlord-tenant contexts, where it bears no relation to constitutional impeachment or witness credibility. Researchers should also distinguish impetitio from IMPLACITARE (to implead) and IMPETERE (to attack or prosecute), though all three share the Latin root and appear in proximity in Spelman and other glossarists.
Why It Matters in Research
Impetitio is a term of art in medieval English legal Latin and will appear primarily in sources predating 1800 — Year Books, Glanvill, Bracton, Coke, and their glossators — as well as in nineteenth-century dictionaries and treatises that preserved Latin terminology for historical accuracy. Researchers encountering impetitio in a primary source should determine context carefully, because the term could signal an accusation (criminal or quasi-criminal), a property action for waste, a simple demand in pleading, or the initiation of a suit, depending on the document and period. The most research-active form is impetitio vasti. Blackstone uses the phrase at 2 Bl. Com. 283, and it appears in Coke's reports (11 Co. 82b, Bowles' Case) as a recognized procedural mechanism. Any Law Mind corpus search touching landlord-tenant relations, waste doctrine, or reversionary interests in real property before 1850 may surface this form. Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-reference to IMPEACHMENT rather than providing a standalone entry for impetitio is itself a research signal: nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries tended to subsume Latin procedural terminology under anglicized headwords, which can cause researchers using English-language indexes to miss the underlying Latin forms in primary sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most complete entry, drawing on Spelman's Glossarium (the authoritative source for medieval legal Latin), Glanvill, Coke, Blackstone, and Bacon's Works. Burrill's synthesis is reliable and appropriately granular, distinguishing the multiple procedural senses rather than collapsing them into a single definition. His entry is cut off in the available extract ("*** In"), suggesting additional senses or examples were present in the original that are not recoverable from the excerpt alone — researchers should consult the full Burrill entry. Rapalje & Lawrence do not provide a standalone definition; their cross-reference to IMPEACHMENT and the note on "implied in law" appears to be a misalignment in the source extract rather than a substantive treatment of impetitio. This gap is notable: by the late nineteenth century, the term had receded sufficiently from active American legal practice that compilers felt safe routing it through anglicized headwords rather than preserving the Latin entry. Neither source addresses how impetitio vasti translated into American colonial and early republic property practice, where waste doctrine was active but Latin procedural terminology was increasingly replaced by English equivalents.
Jurisdictional Note
Impetitio is a term of English legal history and does not appear as operative terminology in American statutes or modern common law jurisdictions. Its relevance to American law is historical and doctrinal — primarily through the survival of waste doctrine — rather than procedural.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Impeachment of Waste Law Mind Encyclopedia — Waste (Property Law) Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval English Civil Procedure
Related Terms
IMPEACHMENT OF WASTE — the principal compound form; the substantive doctrine to which impetitio vasti attaches WASTE — the underlying property doctrine IMPETERE — Latin root verb; to attackprosecuteor call to account IMPLACITARE — to implead; related Latin procedural term IMPEACHMENT — modern anglicized descendant in constitutional and evidentiary contexts ACCUSATION — functional near-equivalent in modern terminology DEMAND — parallel sense in pleading contexts SUIT — parallel sense in Glanvill usage
IMPETITIOmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
- See IMPEACHMENT. such intention. (Poll. Cont. 28.) Such a promise is sometimes said to be "implied in law" (or to exist in implication of law)
IMPETITIOmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870
L. Lat. [from impetere, q. v.] In old English law. An accusation, charge or impeachment. Spelman. A calling to account, or holding accountable or liable; a prosecuting for some alleged damage. Impetitio vasti; impeachment of waste. Id. 2 Bl. Com. 283. A demand. 11 Co. 82 b, Bowles' case. A suit. Glanv. lib. 13, c. 17. A judicial claim or interruption by suit in law. Bacon's Works, iv. 226. *** In Leake v. Eyre, the court held that impetitio was a corruption of impeditio, and imported the same thing with that word, or impedimentum, viz. a hindrance. Cro. Jac. 216. And see Cowell, voc. Impeachment of waste. But Lord Coke has very satisfactorily shown it to be a genuine word. 11 Co. 82 b. And Lord Bacon has more distinctly said that, "It is an ignorant mistaking of any man to take impeachment for impedimentum, and not for impetitio; for it is true that impedimentum doth extend to all hindrances or disturbances, or interruptions, as well in pais as judicial. But impetitio is merely a judicial claim or interruption by suit in law, and upon the matter, all one with implacitatio. Wherein we may first take light of the matters into a bill, answer or other pleadderivation of impetitio, which is a coming or proceeding in a suit, which are not pound of the preposition in, and the verb properly before the court for decision, at peto, whereof the verb peto itself doth sigany particular stage of the suit. Story's nify a demand, but yet properly such a Eq. Pl. § 266. 1 Daniell's Chanc. Pr. (Perkins' ed.) 399, and notes. Impertinence is the same description of fault in pleadings in equity, which, in those at demand as is not extra-judicial; for the words petit judicium, petit auditum brevis, &c. are words of acts judicial. But the preposition in enforceth it more, which

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