Definition
Superoneratio is a Latin term from old English common law denoting the act of surcharging a common — that is, placing more cattle or beasts upon a common pasture than the pasture can sustain, or more than the party's right of common permits. The offense could occur in two distinct ways: by exceeding the number of animals the land could reasonably support, or by turning out animals of a kind not authorized by the terms of the right of common held.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal materials. Researchers working with manorial records, common law pleading forms, or treatises on rights of common will encounter superoneratio as the formal Latin designation for what English-language sources call surcharge or surcharging of a common. The two remedies historically available — admeasurement of pasture (amensuratio) and the assize of novel disseisin of common pasture — are procedurally distinct, and understanding superoneratio as their trigger is essential to tracing those actions in the historical corpus.
The term belongs to a cluster of Latin property concepts tied to common rights. Researchers should be alert to spelling variation in manuscript and early printed sources; the root verb superonerare appears in some sources where the noun form would be expected. Because the right of common itself took several recognized forms, the significance of a surcharge depended on whether the common was appendant, appurtenant, in gross, or by vicinage — context that surrounding pleading language usually supplies.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core meaning. Black's Law Dictionary defines superoneratio as surcharging a common, specifying that the excess may consist of beasts of a number or kind other than the right of common allows. Burrill's Law Dictionary supplies the fullest treatment, providing the Latin parentage (superonerare), the dual basis for the offense (more cattle than the pasture will sustain, or more than the party had right to put), and — most usefully — the Latin maxim identifying the two remedies: admeasurement or the assize of novel disseisin of common pasture. Burrill's quotation, "Duo competunt remedia de superoneratione; vel amensuratio, vel assisa novæ disseysinæ de communia pasturæ," is a genuine procedural marker useful for locating parallel discussions in Bracton and later common law treatises. The Second Edition of Black's adds nothing beyond the first edition on this term.
No historical dictionary entry attempts to trace the term beyond its medieval English context or to note its obsolescence, which is worth flagging: superoneratio has no operative significance in modern law and functions today purely as a research and reading-comprehension term.
Jurisdictional Note
Superoneratio is a term of English common law with no direct equivalent in American statutory or case law. In jurisdictions where rights of common survive — primarily in England and Wales — the concept is addressed through modern commons legislation rather than through common law surcharge actions.