Definition
Latin: "common pleas." In old English law, placita communia denotes civil actions between private subjects — that is, litigation in which the Crown had no direct interest as a party. The term stands in contrast to placita coronae (pleas of the Crown), which were criminal prosecutions brought in the king's name. Placita communia encompassed the ordinary civil disputes of the realm: actions in debt, contract, property, and similar private matters. The phrase gave its name to one of the three great common law courts of medieval and early modern England, the Court of Common Pleas (Curia de Banco Communium Placitorum), which held exclusive or primary jurisdiction over this class of litigation until its abolition in the nineteenth century.
Common Confusion
PLACITA COMMUNIA vs. PLACITA CORONAE: The two phrases are structural opposites and must not be conflated. Placita communia are civil suits between subject and subject; placita coronae are Crown prosecutions for crimes. In historical sources, entries for one term will often reference the other, and researchers scanning abbreviated Latin entries may easily transpose them. The distinction is jurisdictionally significant: placita communia belonged to the Court of Common Pleas; placita coronae belonged principally to the Court of King's Bench.
PLACITA COMMUNIA vs. COMMUNIA PLACITA: These are the same concept with inverted word order. Burrill cross-references both forms. In searching historical indexes or digests, both orderings appear and should be treated as equivalent.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of historical and institutional significance rather than active modern doctrine. Researchers are most likely to encounter placita communia in three contexts:
First, in treatise literature and early case reports predating the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875, the phrase appears as a jurisdictional marker. Actions identified as placita communia were triable in the Court of Common Pleas, not King's Bench. Misreading the classification could lead a researcher to look in the wrong court records or report series.
Second, the phrase anchors the constitutional history of the Court of Common Pleas. Magna Carta (1215), chapter 17 in the original, required that common pleas not follow the king's court but be held in a fixed place — a direct response to the inconvenience of a peripatetic royal court. Understanding placita communia as a category is prerequisite to understanding why a separate fixed court existed at all.
Third, the term appears frequently in Coke and Blackstone as definitional shorthand. Blackstone's Commentaries Book III, pages 38 and 40, uses it to explain the subject-matter jurisdiction of the Common Pleas. Coke on Littleton 284b is cited by Burrill. Researchers working in either source should recognize the phrase on sight.
The practical trap in historical sources is abbreviation. Law Latin entries in older digests and plea rolls may appear as plac. com. or similar contractions. Without familiarity with the full term, a researcher may not recognize the reference.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill are in full agreement on the core meaning: civil actions between subject and subject. All three treat the phrase as a term of institutional description rather than a technical element with operative legal content. None of the three offers a definition that adds nuance beyond the basic contrast with pleas of the Crown.
Burrill is the most useful of the three for research navigation: it cross-references both Communia placita and Placitum commune, signaling that the concept appears under multiple headings in historical sources and that a single-entry search may miss relevant material. Rapalje & Lawrence pairs the entry immediately with placita coronae, which correctly implies that the two terms are best understood as a dyad.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the constitutional significance of the category — the Magna Carta dimension and the institutional history of the Court of Common Pleas. For that, the researcher must go to Blackstone and Coke directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Placita communia is a term of English common law history with no direct American equivalent as a court designation. American jurisdictions adopted general trial courts rather than replicating the English tripartite structure of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer. Some early American states did establish Courts of Common Pleas (Pennsylvania and Ohio, for example), but these courts were not restricted to the technical category of placita communia in the English sense.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Court of Common Pleas
See also Law Mind Encyclopedia — Placita Coronae; Magna Carta (Judicial Provisions)