Definition
In legal usage, "advised" describes a court or judge that has taken time to deliberate before rendering a judgment or ruling. When a court announces it will "take time to be advised," it is reserving decision — suspending immediate pronouncement in order to examine the matter more carefully. The phrase signals that a ruling is pending further consideration, not that the matter has been decided.
The term also appears in procedural phrases such as "well-advised" (describing a party or counsel acting with sound judgment and proper knowledge of the law) and in expressions like "advised of one's rights," meaning formally informed of legal rights, as in Miranda advisements.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Considered or thought out; resulting from deliberation. Also: informed, apprised, or made aware.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Acting with deliberation; prudent; as, "ill-advised" or "well-advised."
The common meaning emphasizes personal deliberateness or the state of being informed. The legal meaning, by contrast, attaches specifically to a court withholding judgment pending examination — a procedural posture, not merely a quality of thoughtfulness. A judge who is "advised" in the legal sense has not yet ruled; common usage would suggest the opposite, that a decision has already been reached with care.
Common Confusion
"Advised" in the sense of a court "taking time to be advised" should not be confused with a court being "under advisement," though the concepts are closely related. "Under advisement" is the more current term of art for a pending, reserved ruling. "Advised" in older reports often appears in the past tense to indicate the court completed that deliberative period and is now prepared to rule — the opposite procedural moment from "under advisement." Researchers reading historical case reports must track which side of the deliberative pause the term falls on.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a procedural marker embedded in older case reports, and misreading it can cause a researcher to misjudge the status of a historical ruling. In early English and American law reports, the phrase "the court took time to be advised" signals that decision was reserved — not rendered. When the same court later appears in the record without that qualifier, the implication is that deliberation concluded and judgment followed.
The word also appears in compound legal phrases that have developed independent significance: "well-advised" as a standard for evaluating party conduct; "advised of rights" as a Miranda and constitutional law term; "donor-advised fund" as a term of art in tax and estate planning. Researchers crossing between practice areas should not carry the procedural court meaning into those contexts, or vice versa.
In corpus research, density of "advised" in older reports will skew toward English common law sources and early American appellate records. The modern equivalent — "under advisement" — largely displaced the older form by the mid-nineteenth century. Searching only one term in historical databases will produce an incomplete picture of reserved-decision practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary carry identical definitions: "Prepared to give judgment, after examination and deliberation," with the illustrative quotation "The court took time to be advised" from 1 Leon. 187 (Leonard's Reports, an Elizabethan-era English law report). The consistency across editions reflects how stable and narrow this legal meaning was — neither edition expands the definition or acknowledges the term's broader procedural evolution into "under advisement."
What the historical dictionaries miss is the term's parallel life in compound phrases. Neither edition addresses "well-advised," "ill-advised," or "advised of rights" as legal constructions, leaving researchers who encounter those forms in source material without dictionary-level guidance. The compound uses require context from surrounding doctrine, not from the Black's entry alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The procedural usage of "advised" is predominantly historical and appears most frequently in English common law reports and early American decisions. Modern American courts use "under advisement" as the standard phrase. Researchers working in civil law jurisdictions or non-English-language sources should not expect a functional equivalent.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For "donor-advised fund" as a term of art, see: Charitable Estate Planning — Charitable Remainder Trusts, Charitable Lead Trusts, and Donor-Advised Funds (The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia, estates_127).