Definition
Latin. In the civil law: temporary; limited to a certain time; not perpetual. The term describes actions, exceptions, and other legal instruments that operate within a defined temporal window rather than indefinitely.
TEMPORALIS ACTIO: A civil law action that could only be brought within a fixed period. Once that period expired, the right to bring the action was extinguished. Distinguished from a perpetual action, which faced no such limitation.
TEMPORALIS EXCEPTIO: A temporary exception or plea that barred or delayed an action for a limited time only. It did not permanently defeat the claim but suspended it. Burrill notes it was otherwise called dilatoria — a dilatory exception — drawn from Institutes 4.13.8 and 4.13.10.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In anatomy, temporalis refers to a fan-shaped muscle arising from the temporal fossa, converging to a tendon inserted into the coronoid process of the mandible; it raises the lower jaw and is involved in chewing.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the term appears as a Latin anatomical descriptor referring to the temporal region of the skull.
The anatomical and legal uses share only a Latin root — tempus, meaning time — and the anatomical sense refers to the location near the temple of the head, not to time-limited operation. Researchers encountering temporalis in legal texts should not conflate the two. Context will resolve the question immediately: the legal term appears in discussions of civil law procedure, actions, and pleas.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
TEMPORALIS ACTIO — The time-limited action. The defining feature is that the right to sue lapsed after a set period; the action itself carried its own expiration.
TEMPORALIS EXCEPTIO — The dilatory or temporary exception. This is a defense that delays rather than permanently bars. Burrill distinguishes it from perpetual exceptions, which permanently extinguished the claim.
Why It Matters in Research
Temporalis is a civilian Latin term and will appear almost exclusively in sources treating Roman law, canon law, or early common law borrowings from civil law procedure. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English equity practice or in mixed jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, South Africa, Scotland) may encounter it in pleading contexts.
The key research trap is conflating the temporalis actio with what modern common law calls a statute of limitations. The concepts are functionally similar but doctrinally distinct: the civil law treated the time limit as an intrinsic characteristic of certain actions (the action itself was temporalis), not as an external statutory bar applied uniformly. This distinction matters when reading historical treatises that discuss whether a particular action is "of its nature perpetual or temporalis" — that framing would be foreign to a common law statute-of-limitations analysis.
The temporalis exceptio maps roughly onto modern dilatory pleas or motions challenging timeliness, but again the civilian framing is structural rather than statutory. Burrill's citation to the Institutes (4.12 and 4.13) provides the primary text anchor for deep research; the Institutes remain the authoritative source for what the Roman categories actually contained.
Researchers in canon law contexts will also encounter the term, as ecclesiastical courts drew heavily on civil law procedure and distinguished temporalis from perpetua in discussing limitations on ecclesiastical actions.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries agree precisely on the core definition. All render temporalis as "temporary; limited to a certain time," and all that address the compound forms identify both the temporalis actio and the temporalis exceptio. There is no divergence on substance.
Burrill is the most developed source here, offering the Institutes citations and the cross-reference to dilatoria for the exception. Burrill also explicitly supplies the "not perpetual" negative definition, which is analytically useful: the term acquires its full meaning in contrast to actiones perpetuae and exceptiones perpetuae.
Black's 2nd edition adds the temporalis exceptio, which Black's 1st omits — a small evolution between editions. Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier are minimal, essentially reproducing the core gloss without the compound forms.
What all historical sources omit: any engagement with how these civilian categories translated (or failed to translate) into early English equity or common law practice. Researchers should not assume the dictionaries' silence on that question means the translation was clean.
Jurisdictional Note
Temporalis as a term of art is operative only in civilian legal systems and in mixed jurisdictions. In American common law states, the functional analog is the statute of limitations, governed by statute rather than by the intrinsic character of the action. Louisiana retains civilian prescriptive periods that more closely track the original civilian logic.