Definition
Rebotable is a Law French term meaning capable of being rebutted, barred, thrust back, or rejected. Applied historically to a party, claim, or plea, it describes something subject to defeat by the opposing party's responsive action — typically by way of rebuttal or bar. The opposite of receivable (receyvable): a party or matter that is receivable may be admitted or accepted; one that is rebotable may be turned away.
The term appears most directly in the context of real property actions and early common law pleading, where it described the procedural standing of a claimant — particularly a female claimant — to be excluded from an action or recovery.
---
Common Confusion
Rebotable and rebuttable are functionally related but formally distinct. Rebuttable is the modern English descendant and is the standard term in contemporary legal usage. Rebotable is its Law French ancestor. A researcher encountering rebotable in a historical source should not treat it as an archaic misspelling of rebuttable, but as a term carrying its own pleading-specific genealogy. The distinction matters when tracing doctrinal history: rebotable appears in early common law sources tied to specific procedural forms, while rebuttable has since expanded into general evidentiary usage (e.g., rebuttable presumption), a broader application the older term did not encompass.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English common law — particularly in sources on real actions, assize proceedings, or the law of dower — will encounter rebotable as a live term, not mere linguistic decoration. Its primary doctrinal home is in the law of real property actions where the right of a claimant (often a widow) to bring or maintain an action could be rebutted by the opposing party's deed, release, or prior act.
The Britton citation in Burrill is the anchor: Britton was a late thirteenth-century English legal treatise written in Law French, summarizing the common law as of Edward I's reign. The passage Burrill quotes — le madle est receyvable, et la femme rebotable — appears in the context of assize proceedings and illustrates a gendered procedural asymmetry: the male claimant is admitted, the female may be rejected. That asymmetry is legally and historically significant and should not be read as mere stylistic contrast.
Researchers should also note the companion entry in Burrill: REBOTER / REBOUTER, the verb form. The phrase reboter l'assise — to bar by the mere act of the party — signals that rebotability in historical sources is sometimes triggered not by a formal pleading but by a party's own conduct. This distinguishes it from the modern rebuttable presumption, which requires affirmative evidence.
Because rebotable is pure Law French with no foothold in modern legal writing, it will not appear in post-seventeenth-century case law or statutory sources under that name. Researchers following the concept forward must pivot to rebuttable and, eventually, to the doctrine of estoppel, which absorbed some of the same functional territory.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language source for this term, and its treatment is lean but precise. Burrill correctly identifies rebotable as an adjectival form derived from reboter, correctly pairs it with its antonym receyvable, and correctly locates it in Britton. The Britton reference is genuine and traceable.
What Burrill does not do is explain the substantive legal doctrine behind the term's use in assize proceedings — the procedural rules governing when a female claimant could be rejected, under what circumstances, and by what mechanism. Researchers needing the doctrine rather than the definition must go beyond Burrill to Britton itself, to Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, or to Pollock and Maitland's The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, which provides substantive analysis of real actions and gendered standing in medieval common law.
No other historical legal dictionary in the standard corpus — not Black's, not Bouvier's, not Tomlin's — carries a distinct entry for rebotable, reflecting the term's early obsolescence in English-language legal practice.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Rebotable is exclusively a historical English common law term with no modern jurisdictional application. Researchers working in American, Canadian, or Australian legal history before the transition away from Law French pleading forms may encounter it; it is not operative in any current jurisdiction.
---