IN OMNIBUS

Definition

A Latin maxim meaning "in all things" or "on all points." Used in legal writing and judicial opinions to indicate complete parallel or total agreement — that a case, rule, or proposition corresponds in every relevant respect to the matter under consideration. The phrase most commonly appears in case comparison, as in "a case parallel in omnibus," signifying that two cases are alike in all material particulars. It also appears embedded in broader Latin maxims of contract and obligations law, where it signals universal application across a category. Two maxims incorporating the phrase appear consistently across historical sources: 1. In omnibus contractibus, sive nominatis sive innominatis, permutatio continetur — "In all contracts, whether nominate or innominate, an exchange of value (i.e., a consideration) is implied." This maxim reflects the classical doctrine that some element of mutuality or exchange underlies every binding agreement. 2. In omnibus obligationibus in quibus dies non ponitur, praesenti die debetur — "In all obligations in which no time is fixed, the obligation is due immediately." This principle governs the default timing of obligations when no date of performance is specified.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not independently defined; "omnibus" in common English denotes something covering many items or subjects at once (an omnibus bill, an omnibus edition). Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Omnibus" — "of, relating to, or providing for many things at once." The common English word "omnibus" captures the sense of breadth and comprehensiveness but does not carry the sense of complete identity or total parallel that the legal phrase conveys. In legal usage, *in omnibus* does not mean "covering many things" — it means "in every point," a claim of exact correspondence rather than mere breadth.

Common Confusion

Do not conflate *in omnibus* with "on all fours," though the two phrases are functionally equivalent in modern legal usage. Bouvier explicitly equates them, noting that "on all fours" is the modern English phrase "to the same effect." Researchers encountering *in omnibus* in older reports are reading the Latin antecedent of what contemporary practitioners express as "on all fours" — a case that matches the present matter in every relevant fact and legal principle. The Latin form effectively disappears from American legal writing by the late nineteenth century, replaced entirely by the English idiom.

Why It Matters in Research

The primary research value of *in omnibus* is recognizing it when encountered in early English and American case reports. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English reporters — and their American successors citing those reporters — routinely used the phrase to signal that a cited case was deemed controlling on every point. Missing this signals that an apparently brief phrase is doing significant argumentative work: the citing party is claiming the precedent is not merely analogous but fully on point. Researchers working in early American case law (pre-1820) or in English reports (the Moderns, the King's Bench reporters) will encounter *in omnibus* as a live term. By the mid-nineteenth century it is already becoming archaic, and by the twentieth century it survives almost exclusively in quotations from older authorities or in scholarly discussion of the maxims themselves. The two embedded contract and obligations maxims are separately significant. The *in omnibus contractibus* maxim appears in discussions of consideration doctrine and the nominata/innominata distinction inherited from Roman law — relevant to any research tracing the historical foundations of contract theory in common law. The obligations maxim bearing on the absence of a stated performance date has parallels in later codified rules on demand obligations. Corpus researchers should note that searches for *in omnibus* in digitized case law will return the phrase in both its standalone comparative use ("parallel in omnibus") and as a component of the longer Latin maxims. These are conceptually distinct uses and should not be conflated in analysis.

Historical Dictionary Support

All four source dictionaries agree on the core translation ("in all things; on all points") and cite the same illustrative case reference — 10 Mod. 104 — as the canonical example of the phrase in judicial use. Burrill adds a second illustration from the same reporter (2 Mod. 13), noting a judge agreeing "in omnibus," which shows the phrase operating as shorthand for complete judicial concurrence. Bouvier is the only source that explicitly bridges the historical Latin usage to the contemporary English equivalent ("on all fours"), which is a useful editorial contribution that the other dictionaries omit. None of the historical dictionaries treat the embedded maxims with significant independent analysis; they are cited as illustrative extensions of the phrase's meaning rather than as freestanding doctrines. Researchers needing more than the maxim text itself should look beyond these dictionaries to the treatise sources they cite — Gravina's civil law work and Blackstone's Commentaries, Book II.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Maxims of Law; Consideration (Contract Law); Nominate and Innominate Contracts.

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