Definition
In common law pleading, the plaintiff's formal written response to the defendant's plea. After a defendant filed a plea in bar or in abatement, the plaintiff was required either to deny the factual allegations of the plea, confess and avoid them, or demur — and this responsive pleading was the replication. The replication served as the third pleading in the sequence: declaration (plaintiff), plea (defendant), replication (plaintiff).
In equity practice, the replication was the plaintiff's (or complainant's) response to the defendant's answer. Its function differed from its common law counterpart: rather than targeting specific factual allegations, the general replication operated as a global denial — asserting that the defendant's answer was insufficient to defeat the bill and affirming the truth of the bill's own allegations. This had the further procedural effect of closing the pleadings and putting all well-pleaded matters in the answer at issue, thereby opening the case to proof.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A copy or reproduction; the process by which something is duplicated, including biological processes (DNA replication) and data systems (database replication).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An answer or reply; also, echo or repercussion of sound; a repetition or copy.
The gap is real but easy to navigate. In ordinary English, "replication" most commonly means copying or reproduction. In legal pleading, it means something more precise: a responsive pleading by the plaintiff, not a copy of anything. A legal researcher encountering "replication" in old case files or pleading records should not read it as duplication — it is a distinct procedural document in the pleading sequence.
Common Confusion
Replication is frequently conflated with reply. In modern practice and in some historical sources, the terms are used interchangeably, but the distinction once had technical force. In English common law pleading, "replication" was the specific term of art for the plaintiff's response to the defendant's plea at law. "Reply" became the preferred term in reformed procedure systems, particularly after the English Judicature Acts (1873–1875) merged law and equity. In American jurisdictions that adopted code pleading (following the New York Field Code of 1848), "replication" largely disappeared as a procedural label, replaced by "reply." Researchers working across the pre- and post-reform periods should be alert to this substitution: the same functional pleading may be called a replication in pre-reform sources and a reply in post-reform sources.
Replication should also be distinguished from rejoinder. The pleading sequence runs: declaration → plea → replication → rejoinder → surrejoinder → rebutter → surrebutter. A replication comes from the plaintiff; a rejoinder comes from the defendant in response to the replication. The two are consecutive, not synonymous.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
General replication: In equity, a standard form denying the sufficiency and truth of the defendant's answer and affirming the bill. Filing a general replication closed the pleadings and moved the case toward the proof stage. It was not a vehicle for introducing new factual allegations.
Special replication: A replication that introduces new matter — additional facts going beyond a bare denial — to counter specific averments in the defendant's plea. At common law, if the plaintiff wished to confess and avoid the plea (rather than simply deny it), a special replication was required.
Why It Matters in Research
Replication is a structural marker in historical pleading records. Its presence in a file tells you where the case stood procedurally: the defendant had answered or pleaded, the plaintiff had responded, and the pleadings were either closed (in equity, after a general replication) or continuing toward further exchanges. Absence of a replication in a file that reached final judgment may indicate that a demurrer or default disposed of the matter before the plaintiff needed to respond.
The equity/common law distinction is the principal research trap. A "general replication" in a chancery file is not the same instrument as a "replication" in a common law file, even though both respond to the defendant's pleading. In equity, the general replication's chief function was procedural finality — it triggered the proof stage. In common law, the replication was a substantive pleading that could itself be demurred to or met with a rejoinder.
Jurisdictional timing matters. American states adopted code pleading at different moments across the mid-to-late nineteenth century. In states that retained common law pleading late — or in federal equity practice, which survived in recognizable form until the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect in 1938 — replication remained operative vocabulary well into the twentieth century. Federal equity sources from the 1890s through the 1930s (including circuit court decisions and equity rule practice) will use the term in its technical sense.
Watch for the admiralty variant noted in Bouvier: in admiralty practice, replication to an answer to a libel was eventually abolished, reflecting admiralty's distinct procedural evolution. Researchers in maritime case files should not expect to find replications as a matter of course.
Cross-corpus connections: Replication appears in pleading manuals, form books, and equity practice guides, not just in reported decisions. When researching a historical case, the replication itself (if filed) may contain the plaintiff's most detailed factual narrative — more focused than the original bill or declaration precisely because it responds point by point to the defendant's claims.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources agree on the core definition with unusual consistency: replication is the plaintiff's answer to the defendant's plea (at law) or answer (in equity). Burrill, drawing on Stephens on Pleading and Blackstone's Commentaries, provides the cleanest formulation of the common law version. Black's second edition adds the equity dimension most fully, distinguishing general from special forms and noting the procedural effect of the general replication in closing pleadings.
Anderson's entry is brief but usefully notes the three options available to a plaintiff filing a replication at common law: deny the plea's allegations, allege new contradictory matter, or confess and avoid. This tripartite structure reflects classical common law pleading logic and is a useful analytical frame for reading historical replications.
Bouvier's entries, while fragmented in the source material here, are notable for flagging federal equity practice specifically — including the timing rule for filing a general replication after an answer, and the admiralty exception. These practice-specific details are often absent from the definitional dictionaries and reflect Bouvier's practitioner orientation.
None of the historical sources adequately address the transition to code pleading or the eventual absorption of replication into the modern "reply." This is a gap researchers must fill from procedural history sources rather than from the dictionaries themselves.
Jurisdictional Note
In England, replication as a term of art was effectively retired by the Judicature Acts and the procedural rules that followed. In the United States, the timeline varied by state: code pleading states abandoned the term relatively early, while states retaining common law pleading forms used it later. Federal equity practice used replication through the 1930s. Researchers working in Louisiana, which followed a civil law tradition, will not encounter replication in the common law sense at all.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Pleading (Common Law); Equity Practice and Procedure.