Definition
To surcharge; to overburden a common pasture or other shared resource by placing upon it more cattle or other animals than the land can sustain or than the party's right of common entitles them to put there. The term appears in the Latin formula of the old common-law writ addressed to one who has unjustly overburdened a common: quod talis injuste superoneravit communem pasturam suam — "that such a one has unjustly surcharged his common pasture."
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of pleading and writ practice, not a substantive doctrine in its own right. Researchers encountering superonerare in historical records will find it embedded in the language of actions on the case or other proceedings related to rights of common — specifically the wrong of surcharging. The relevant substantive doctrine to follow is surcharge of common, which survived superonerare as usable English and continued to appear in equity as well as at common law.
The term signals a narrow but important jurisdictional and procedural context: disputes among commoners over the stocking of shared pasture. In historical English court records, manorial court rolls, and common-law plea rolls, superonerare and superoneravit (the past-tense form meaning "has surcharged") function as terms of art in the pleading formula. Researchers reading Bracton or early Year Books will encounter the term in this formulaic context; it does not appear with independent doctrinal development outside of surcharge.
Blackstone's reference at 3 Bl. Com. 238 provides the most accessible bridge for researchers: Blackstone treats surcharging the common as one of the injuries cognizable at law respecting rights of common, and the Latin formula preserved by Burrill maps directly onto that discussion. For any research touching rights of common in the medieval or early modern period, superonerare is an index term pointing toward that broader body of law rather than a freestanding concept requiring independent analysis.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical source for this term in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill correctly identifies the Latin construction (super + onerare), gives the past-tense pleading form superoneravit, and supplies the Bracton citation (fol. 229) alongside the Blackstone reference. This is a complete treatment for a term of this kind — a Latin term of art whose function is fully discharged by its appearance in writ formulas and pleading.
Historical dictionaries generally handle superonerare briefly, and appropriately so. The substantive law lives elsewhere, under common, right of common, and surcharge. Burrill's value here is preserving the writ formula in its original Latin, which aids identification of the term in manuscript and printed primary sources where it appears in pleading contexts.
Jurisdictional Note
Superonerare is a term of English common law with no independent American doctrinal history. American law absorbed the underlying concept through the general law of rights of common, but the Latin pleading formula did not travel with it in any practical sense. Researchers working in American property law will encounter the doctrine of surcharging common under its English name.