Definition
A Latin term from the canon and civil law meaning to make a cross-demand upon the actor — that is, upon the plaintiff. Reconvenire describes the procedural act by which a defendant, rather than merely defending against a plaintiff's claim, turns and asserts an independent or related claim back against that same plaintiff in the same proceeding. It is the conceptual ancestor of what modern common law systems call a counterclaim.
Common Confusion
Reconvenire is closely related to, but should not be conflated with, the noun form reconventio (sometimes rendered reconvention), which names the procedural device or action itself, while reconvenire names the act of asserting it. In practice, legal historians and dictionary compilers have used both terms interchangeably, but strict civilian usage treats reconventio as the substantive legal institution and reconvenire as the verb describing its exercise. Modern researchers should also resist the impulse to treat reconvenire as a direct synonym for counterclaim: the modern counterclaim carries specific procedural requirements under rules-based systems (such as mandatory versus permissive counterclaims under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) that have no clean counterpart in the civilian concept.
Why It Matters in Research
RECONVENIRE is a term that appears primarily in historical legal materials touching on civil law, canon law, and the early development of English procedural doctrine. Researchers encounter it most often in secondary histories of English law and in comparative treatments of civil versus common law procedure.
The critical navigational point: reconvenire itself is not a term of art in modern Anglo-American practice. When you encounter it in primary sources, you are almost always dealing with either (1) a civilian or canonist procedural treatise, (2) an English legal historian describing continental or ecclesiastical court procedure, or (3) early commentary that was translating civilian concepts into the common law context. The term signals that the source is engaging with a Roman or canon law framework — a flag worth noting when assessing the persuasive authority or jurisdictional context of the surrounding material.
The reference shared across all three source dictionaries — Reeve's History of English Law — is itself instructive. Reeve's work is a historical treatment, not a practitioner's guide, which confirms that reconvenire entered English legal literature as a descriptive and historical term rather than as operative procedural vocabulary. Researchers tracing the doctrinal lineage of counterclaims or setoffs in equity or ecclesiastical courts will find reconvenire as a useful waypoint but should not expect to find it in common law pleading manuals or early American practice texts.
There is also a corpus connection worth noting: researchers working on cross-claims, setoffs, or recoupment in equity will encounter a cluster of Latin procedural terms — reconventio, compensatio, exceptio — that travel alongside reconvenire in civilian-influenced materials. Knowing this cluster helps avoid the trap of treating each term as an isolated concept when they are part of an integrated civilian procedural vocabulary.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement — textually identical, in fact — on the definition of reconvenire. All three reproduce the same gloss and the same citation to Reeve's History of English Law. This uniformity suggests that later compilers drew on the same source rather than independently verifying the term across a broader range of authorities.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is context for how reconvenire functioned procedurally within canon or civil law courts — whether it required a nexus to the original claim, how it was pleaded, or what limitations governed it. The entries treat reconvenire as a translational term (mapping Latin to English procedural vocabulary) rather than as a substantive doctrinal entry. Researchers who need more than the bare definition must go upstream to the civilian and canonist sources themselves, or to Reeve's History directly, for any procedural detail.