Definition
In civil law pleading, the triplicatio is the plaintiff's reply to the defendant's duplicatio (rejoinder). It is the third exchange in the formal sequence of pleadings following the initial claim and the defendant's answer: the plaintiff's replication is answered by the defendant's duplicatio, and the plaintiff then responds with the triplicatio. A quadruplicatio by the defendant follows if the exchange continues further.
In older common law pleading usage, the term was occasionally applied in the reverse direction — as the defendant's answer to the plaintiff's replication — functioning as a rejoinder rather than a surrejoinder. This inversion appears in sources such as Burrill and creates a point of genuine ambiguity in historical texts.
The term's civil law meaning is its primary and more authoritative sense: triplicatio corresponds to the surrejoinder of common law pleading.
Common Confusion
Two distinct usages of triplicatio appear in the historical record and conflict directly. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's primary definition treat it as the plaintiff's response to the duplicatio — placing it on the plaintiff's side of the exchange, equivalent to the common law surrejoinder. Rapalje & Lawrence, however, identify it with a rebutter, which in common law pleading is the defendant's answer to the surrejoinder — one step further in the sequence and on the opposite side. Burrill additionally notes an "old pleading" usage in which triplicatio means the defendant's rejoinder to the plaintiff's replication, reversing the civil law assignment entirely.
Researchers encountering the term in historical texts must determine from context whether the source is using it in the civil law sense (plaintiff's third pleading) or the older common law-inflected sense (defendant's response). These are not interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
Triplicatio is a term of procedural architecture, not substantive law. Its significance in the Law Mind corpus is almost entirely confined to sources on Roman and civil law procedure, canon law pleading, and early English common law treatises that absorbed civilian influence.
The key research trap is the directional ambiguity described above. A researcher tracing pleading sequences in a medieval or early modern source must establish which tradition the author is working in before assuming which party the triplicatio belongs to. Bracton and Fleta — both cited in the dictionary sources — operate in a mixed civilian-common law environment, and their usage may not map cleanly onto later systematizations.
The term also signals the depth of pleading exchange in a given proceeding. Civil and canon law proceedings permitted — in theory — an extended sequence of alternating responses: replicatio, duplicatio, triplicatio, quadruplicatio. In practice, courts and practitioners often truncated this sequence. Finding triplicatio in a record therefore tells a researcher that the pleading exchange was unusually extended and contested at the procedural level.
For researchers working in ecclesiastical courts, admiralty, or equity jurisdictions with civilian heritage, this term will appear with greater frequency than in common law records. It is essentially absent from post-medieval English common law pleading as a term of art, where surrejoinder and rebutter displaced it.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core civil law definition but diverge in ways that matter. Black's (both editions) give the cleanest and most consistent account: triplicatio is the plaintiff's reply to the defendant's rejoinder, corresponding to the surrejoinder. Both cite Justinian's Institutes (4, 14) and Bracton as authority, though Bracton's actual treatment of civilian pleading terminology is imprecise by modern standards.
Burrill is the most informative source here. He provides the Latin formula — "Ad replicationem sequitur triplicatio, et ad triplicationem quadruplicatio" — which captures the sequential logic of extended civil law pleading and situates triplicatio within that chain. His citation to Fleta (lib. 6, c. 36, § 11) is also the most specific reference to an English-language civilian source treating this pleading stage directly.
Rapalje & Lawrence's identification of triplicatio with a rebutter is the outlier and should be treated with caution. A rebutter is a later-sequence pleading on the defendant's side, and assigning that meaning to triplicatio conflicts with the civilian tradition and with Burrill's more careful analysis. This may reflect a loose equivalence drawn from common law pleading practice rather than a precise civil law correspondence.
None of the historical dictionaries address the ecclesiastical court usage or the admiralty context in any detail — a gap that researchers working in those areas will need to fill from specialized procedural treatises.
Jurisdictional Note
Triplicatio as a technical term belongs to jurisdictions with civilian procedural heritage: Roman law systems, canon law courts, and early English courts of admiralty and equity. It does not appear as a live term of art in modern common law civil procedure. Researchers encountering it in any post-eighteenth-century source are almost certainly reading historical or comparative material.