Definition
A court for the speedy execution of justice upon military delinquents. The term is Latin in character and refers to a summary military tribunal convened to adjudicate offenses by soldiers or other military persons with dispatch, bypassing the slower procedures of ordinary civil courts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older English legal sources and carries essentially no independent modern usage. Researchers encountering it in historical documents should understand that it denotes a military summary court rather than any form of civilian proceeding. Because the term is rare and confined to a narrow historical context, it will surface chiefly in treatises and dictionaries treating of early English military law or court organization rather than in reported case law. The sole authoritative source cited in the historical dictionaries is Cowell — that is, John Cowell's Interpreter (1607), a glossary of legal terms — meaning that secondary citation chains for this term are short and almost entirely derivative of that single early modern source. Researchers should not expect to find spate placitum treated in equity or common law reporters; if it appears in a primary document, it signals a military or martial-law context. Cross-referencing with entries on courts-martial, military tribunals, and summary jurisdiction will be more productive than searching case law indexes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence offer identical, compressed definitions tracing directly to Cowell's Interpreter. Neither source expands on Cowell's formulation or provides any illustrative authority beyond it. This convergence reflects the term's narrow historical provenance rather than independent verification: both dictionaries are evidently copying from the same root source. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry appears in a portion of the text that also addresses the Speaker of the House of Lords and the spawn of oysters, suggesting the term occupies a brief alphabetical slot in a general glossary with no extended treatment. Black's likewise offers nothing beyond the Cowell attribution.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply: any procedural detail about how such a court was constituted, what offenses fell within its jurisdiction, how it differed from courts-martial of later development, or whether it had any statutory basis. Researchers should treat the historical dictionary entries as terminological markers only, not as substantive accounts of the institution.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to early English legal history and has no recognized counterpart in American law. It would not be encountered in any modern Anglo-American jurisdiction as a live procedural category.