The Collaborative International Dictionary
Plebiscitum \Ple`bis*ci"tum\, n. [L., fr. plebs, plebis, common people + scitum decree.] (Rom. Antiq.) A law enacted by the common people, under the superintendence of a tribune or some subordinate plebeian magistrate, without the intervention of the senate.
Wiktionary
n. (context historical Roman antiquity English) A law enacted by the common people, under the superintendence of a tribune or some subordinate plebeian magistrate, without the intervention of the senate.
Usage examples of "plebiscitum".
But the plebiscitum cannot be legally appealed to or be valid when and where there is a legal government existing and in the full exercise of its constitutional functions, as was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in a case growing out of what is known as the Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island.
A suffrage committee, having no political authority, drew up and presented a new constitution of government to the people, plead a plebiscitum in its favor, and claimed the officers elected under it as the legally elected officers of the state.
The court refused to recognize the plebiscitum, and decided that it knew Rhode Island only as represented through the government, which had never ceased to exist.
New States in Territories have been organized on the strength of a plebiscitum when the legal Territorial government was in force, and were admitted as States into the Union, which, though irregular and dangerous, could be done without revolution, because Congress, that admitted them, is the power to grant the permission to organize as States and apply for admission.
In his case the plebiscitum was proper and sufficient, even if it be conceded that it was through his own fault that France at the moment was found without a legal government.
The plebiscitum, which is simply an appeal to the people outside of government, is not valid when the government has not lapsed, either by its usurpations or by its dissolution, nor is it valid either in the case of a province, or of a population that has no organic existence as an independent sovereign state.
In the case of the states and provinces--except Lombardy, ceded to France by Austria, and sold to the Sardinian king--annexed to Piedmont to form the new kingdom of Italy, the plebiscitum was invalid, because implying the right of the people to rebel against the legal authority, and to break the unity and individuality of the state of which they form an integral part.
There is no necessity for it to appeal to a plebiscitum to complete its acts.
It leaves and is intended to leave the nation no way of practically asserting its sovereignty but by either a revolution or a plebiscitum, and a plebiscitum is permissible only where there is no regular government.
States they were in addition ratified and confirmed, if the facts have been correctly reported, by a genuine plebiscitum, or direct vote of the people.
People, a vote to be taken, a plebiscitum, in short, to create a Government in appearance at the very moment when he overturned one.
Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on their weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter.
If the Senate gave their consent, they at the same time voted a sum of money toward defraying the necessary expenses, and one of the Tribunes applied for a plebiscitum to permit the Imperator to retain his imperium on the day when he entered the city.