Common Pleas
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary · Walter A. Shumaker and George Foster Longsdorf; ed. James C. Cahill · 1922
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary
The name of a court having jurisdiction generally of civil actions. Such pleas or actions as are brought by private persons against private persons, or by the government, when the cause of action is of a civil nature. In England, whence we derived this phrase, common pleas are so called to distinguish them from pleas of the crown.