Definition
A writ issued out of chancery and directed to the sheriff, commanding the removal of a civil suit — specifically a replevin action — from an inferior court not of record (such as a hundred court or court baron) to one of the superior common law courts. The writ directed the sheriff to go to the designated inferior court where the suit was pending and to cause its transfer upward in the judicial hierarchy. It functioned as a removal mechanism at common law, available when a party sought access to a court with greater authority and record-keeping formality than the tribunal where the action had originated.
Common Confusion
ACCEDAS AD CURIAM is sometimes loosely grouped with certiorari and other removal writs as though they were interchangeable. They were not. Certiorari removed causes from inferior courts of record; ACCEDAS AD CURIAM operated specifically against courts not of record — the hundred court and court baron — where the record itself did not exist in the formal legal sense. The practical consequence was that the writ could not bring up a record for review (there being none), but instead transferred the cause so it could proceed anew in the superior court. This distinction matters when reading historical pleading treatises that catalog removal mechanisms, as conflating the two produces a misreading of the procedural posture of old English litigation.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a purely historical term. No American jurisdiction adopted ACCEDAS AD CURIAM as part of its practice, and the English courts it served — the hundred court and court baron — had largely lost practical significance well before the colonial period. Researchers encountering this writ in historical materials are almost certainly working with English sources from the medieval or early modern period, or with English practice manuals reprinted in America.
The primary research trap is treating this writ as part of a living removal doctrine. It is not. Its relevance to American legal research is limited to: (1) understanding the structure of the pre-modern English court system and its layered jurisdictions; (2) tracing the genealogy of removal and certiorari doctrine for comparative or historical purposes; and (3) decoding references in English treatises — particularly Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, Blackstone's Commentaries, and Tidd's Practice — that appear in the footnotes of American common law scholarship.
Within the Law Mind corpus, ACCEDAS AD CURIAM connects most naturally to materials on the forms of action, the writ system generally, and the structure of inferior English courts. Researchers studying replevin as a cause of action will find this writ at the boundary where procedural history intersects with property and distress law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) gives identical, terse definitions: an original writ from chancery directed to the sheriff for removal of a replevin suit from a hundred court or court baron to a superior court. The citation string — Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at 18, Blackstone's Commentaries at 3 Bl. Comm. 34, and Tidd's Practice at volume 1, page 38 — is consistent across editions, reflecting that the writ was a fixed historical object by the time American legal dictionaries were compiled, not a living procedural tool requiring updated analysis.
Burrill's Law Dictionary adds the most useful substantive detail. It supplies the Latin translation ("You go to the court"), confirms the writ's common law origin, and specifies the operative command: the sheriff was directed to attend the inferior court where the plaint was pending and effect the transfer. Burrill also cites Termes de la Ley, an earlier English law dictionary, signaling that this writ was already being defined historically rather than practically even in the early modern English sources.
All three dictionaries are in agreement on function, scope, and procedure. None attempts to extend the writ beyond English practice, and none suggests any American application. What the historical dictionaries do not address — because they had no reason to — is the reason for the writ's limitation to replevin. That limitation likely reflects the disproportionate use of replevin in disputes over distrained goods that originated in manorial and hundred court proceedings, making those inferior tribunals the natural venue where such suits would arise and from which removal would be sought.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively English in origin and application. It belongs to the pre-modern English court structure and has no recognized counterpart or successor in American federal or state practice. Researchers working in American jurisdictions should treat any reference to ACCEDAS AD CURIAM as a signal that the source material is drawing on English common law history rather than operative doctrine.