Definition
Assisis is a Latin term drawn from medieval English law, appearing as the title of a statute enacted under Edward I (21 Edw. I) that defined the qualifications of persons to be empaneled on assizes. In practical terms, it refers to those who are to be "put on assises" — that is, qualified to serve as jurors or recognitors in the assize proceedings of the English common law system. The term is not a substantive legal concept in its own right but rather a descriptive label attached to a specific piece of Edwardian legislation governing juror eligibility.
Why It Matters in Research
Assisis matters primarily to researchers working in medieval and early English legal history, particularly those tracing the development of jury qualification standards. The statute of 21 Edw. I sits within a cluster of late thirteenth-century legislation that systematized and formalized the assize system, and a researcher encountering the term in a primary source or secondary commentary should understand it as a reference to that statutory context rather than to any freestanding doctrine.
The term will not appear in modern legal research. It is confined to historical sources covering English law from roughly the Norman period through the early modern era. Researchers should be alert to the fact that "assisis" is frequently embedded in discussions of the broader assize system without being clearly distinguished from related terms such as assize, assisa, and jurata. Confusing assisis (the statute and its subject persons) with assisa (the proceeding or writ) is an easy error when reading secondary sources that use the terms interchangeably or loosely.
The principal secondary sources referencing this term — Crabb's English Law and Reeve's History of the English Law — are nineteenth-century digests of medieval legal history. Researchers relying on them should understand they are working at one remove from the original statutes and plea rolls.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary supplies the core entry: assisis designates those who are to be put on assizes, with the term serving as the title of the 21 Edw. I statute defining juror qualifications. Black's points researchers to Crabb's English Law (pages 167 and 189) and Reeve's History of the English Law (volume 2, page 184) as the supporting secondary literature.
No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus supplies an independent entry for assisis. The historical record on this term is therefore thin — Black's single-sentence treatment reflects the marginal role the term plays even within specialized historical legal literature. Researchers should not expect to find doctrinal elaboration; the term is archival rather than conceptual.
What the historical sources do not address is the practical content of the qualification standards the statute imposed — that information must be pursued directly in the text of 21 Edw. I and in the broader secondary literature on Edwardian legal reform.
Jurisdictional Note
Assisis is exclusively a term of historical English law with no reception into American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions as a term of art. It has no operative legal meaning in any modern jurisdiction.