Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "in respite" or "in abeyance." In medieval and early English common law procedure, *in respectu* described the condition of a legal action — most commonly an assize — that had been formally postponed or held over rather than immediately tried. When a court placed a proceeding *in respectu*, it was suspended pending some future event, condition, or court date, without being dismissed or decided on the merits.
The phrase functioned as a procedural status marker: the action existed, had been commenced, but was not currently before the court for resolution.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the procedural vocabulary of medieval English law, particularly the law of assizes — the early real property actions that preceded the modern forms of ejectment and title litigation. Researchers encountering *in respectu* in primary sources such as Bracton, Fleta, or Year Books should understand it as a technical notation of suspension, not dismissal or judgment.
The phrase is rarely encountered after the decline of the old real actions. Its appearances in early modern English reports (Yelverton's Reports, for instance) reflect the tail end of the assize system. A researcher working in post-seventeenth-century materials who finds this phrase is almost certainly reading a citation back to medieval authority, not a contemporary procedural term.
One navigational trap: Burrill's entry for *in respectu* is immediately followed by the maxim *in restitutionem, non in pœnam, hæres succedit* — a distinct and unrelated principle governing the liability of heirs. The two appear in close proximity in older dictionary formats and should not be conflated. They share only a page, not a subject.
Corpus researchers should also note the relationship between *in respectu* and the broader vocabulary of respite and continuance. The underlying concept — formal postponement of proceedings — connects to the English law of *essoin* (excused absence), *continuance*, and *adjournment*, terms that carry the same functional idea into later procedural eras.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the primary surviving lexicographic treatment. Burrill defines the phrase concisely as "in respite," grounding it in Bracton (*De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae*, fol. 256) and Fleta (lib. 5, c. 3, § 4), both thirteenth-century treatises on English common law, as well as Yelverton's Reports (97). This triangulation across Bracton, Fleta, and a later report confirms the phrase had both doctrinal and practitioner currency in its era.
No significant divergence exists among historical sources because the phrase is narrow and technical — it did not evolve into competing meanings. What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural mechanics: what conditions triggered a respite, how long it lasted, and how the action was revived. For that, researchers must go to Bracton and Fleta directly, or to secondary treatments of the assize system in works on early English legal history.
The embedding of *in restitutionem, non in pœnam* immediately after *in respectu* in Burrill's text is an artifact of alphabetical-by-first-letter organization common to nineteenth-century legal dictionaries. It should not suggest any doctrinal connection between the two.
Jurisdictional Note
*In respectu* is a term of English common law with no independent American doctrinal development. American legal dictionaries that carry the phrase do so as a matter of historical completeness, not living practice. It has no counterpart in civil law systems.