Definition
A writ in English common law that issued where a person who had already been impleaded in a county court for surcharging a common of pasture was again impleaded in the same court for the same offense. The writ operated to remove the cause from the county court to Westminster Hall. The term is Latin, meaning roughly "for surcharging pasture," and the writ belongs to the broader family of remedies governing rights of common.
To surcharge a common of pasture is to put more animals onto common land than one's right of common allows — that is, to overburden the shared grazing resource beyond the entitlement attached to the commoner's land. The writ of superoneratione pasturae addressed the procedural circumstance in which a defendant faced repeated impleading in the county court for this conduct, providing a mechanism for removing the dispute to a superior tribunal.
Common Confusion
Superoneratione pasturae should not be confused with the underlying substantive action for surcharge of common, which could be pursued through other writs and in other courts. The writ described here is a specific procedural instrument triggered by the fact of prior impleading in the county court — it is the repetition of the county court proceedings, not the surcharge itself, that activates this particular writ. Researchers should also distinguish surcharge (putting on too many animals) from other interference with rights of common, such as approvement or enclosure, which gave rise to different writs entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in early English legal materials — registers of writs, abridgements, and treatises on common law procedure predating the reorganization of English courts. The writ is obsolete and was never transplanted into American law. Researchers working in colonial American legal sources will not encounter it in operative form, though it may appear in reference lists drawn from English practice.
The primary research trap is treating this as a general writ for surcharge of common. It is not. Its defining feature is the procedural posture: a prior impleading in the county court. Without that prior proceeding, this writ would not lie, and the plaintiff's remedy would follow a different path.
Bouvier's treatment is minimal and points to the Registrum Judiciale (Reg. Jur. 36 b) as the underlying source. Researchers needing more than a brief definition should consult the registers of writs directly, as well as Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and Comyns' Digest under the heading for commons, where the writ family governing rights of common pasture receives broader treatment. The connection between writs of this type and the gradual transfer of common law business from local to central courts is a thread worth following for historians of English legal procedure.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source covering this term, and its entry is brief — four lines that identify the writ, describe its operative trigger, and cite the Registrum Judiciale. Bouvier adds no analysis, which is characteristic of his treatment of highly technical, obsolete English writs that had no American application.
The historical record on this writ is thin by design: it occupied a narrow procedural niche and was rendered irrelevant as county court jurisdiction contracted and Westminster Hall consolidated common law business. No divergence or evolution can be tracked across the available dictionary sources because only one source addresses it. Researchers should weight Bouvier's entry accordingly — it accurately conveys the writ's function but offers no depth on its history or the case law that may have defined its limits.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively English common law in origin and application. It has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or Irish law. In American jurisdictions, disputes over overuse of shared grazing land, where they arose, were resolved through equity or common law nuisance and trespass actions without resort to the English writ system.