Definition
Latin: "leave to speak." A procedural term from old English common law practice referring to the court's grant of permission to a defendant to speak with (or confer with) the plaintiff — more precisely, permission to seek an imparlance. The term denotes either the imparlance itself or, more accurately, the leave granted to request one. An imparlance was a continuance or extension of time allowed to a defendant before being required to plead, ostensibly to permit the parties an opportunity to settle or confer.
The distinction flagged by Blackstone and carried through Burrill is worth preserving: licentia loquendi is not strictly synonymous with imparlance itself but refers to the leave to imparl — the permission that initiated the procedural step, not the step in its entirety.
Common Confusion
Licentia loquendi is sometimes used interchangeably with imparlance in historical sources, including Bouvier's, which defines the term simply by cross-reference. Researchers should treat the two as related but not identical: licentia loquendi is the court's grant of leave; imparlance is the period or procedural device that followed from that grant. Conflating them can obscure the mechanics of early common law pleading. See IMPARLANCE.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in pre-modern English pleading records, case reports, and treatises — rarely, if ever, in American practice after the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. Its practical significance collapsed when code pleading displaced the old common law forms of action and the elaborate imparlance system with them.
Several traps await:
First, the term appears in Latin in primary sources without translation, and its meaning has dropped out of most modern legal dictionaries entirely. Researchers working in early Year Books, plea rolls, or treatises predating the Field Code era (1848 onward) need to recognize it on sight.
Second, because Bouvier simply redirects to imparlance without explanation, researchers relying on Bouvier alone will miss the conceptual distinction between the leave and the procedural device itself. Burrill and Black's preserve the nuance more faithfully.
Third, the term surfaces in discussions of delay tactics in historical pleading practice. Imparlances, obtained through licentia loquendi, were frequently used — and frequently abused — to extend litigation. Commentators from Blackstone onward noted the capacity for misuse. Researchers examining historical critiques of common law pleading inefficiency should look for this term as a marker.
No meaningful American jurisdictional variation exists because the concept did not survive transplantation into American procedure in operative form. References to licentia loquendi in American sources are almost always historical or academic.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries treat this as a term of old practice, and none claims current operative significance. Black's and Burrill's are nearly identical in their entries, both citing 3 Blackstone's Commentaries 299 and both preserving the distinction between leave to speak and imparlance proper. Bouvier's takes a shortcut — a single cross-reference to imparlance — which is accurate as far as it goes but loses the granularity.
The shared citation to Blackstone is the authoritative anchor. Blackstone's treatment of imparlance in Book III of the Commentaries is the standard reference point for understanding where licentia loquendi sat within the larger machinery of common law pleading. No source dictionary provides any American case authority, and none is expected: this term belongs to the English procedural tradition.
What the historical sources collectively omit is any account of the term's decline. The disappearance of licentia loquendi from practice is part of the broader story of pleading reform, but readers of these dictionaries are left to supply that context themselves.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Imparlance; Common Law Pleading (Forms of Action)