Definition
Avisement is an archaic legal term meaning deliberation, consideration, or advisement — particularly the pause a court takes to consider a matter before rendering judgment or ruling. When a court takes a case "under avisement" (in its modernized form, "under advisement"), it reserves decision after hearing argument, suspending immediate judgment in order to deliberate. The term carries no distinct substantive legal meaning beyond this procedural function; it signals that a decision is pending rather than immediate.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An alternative form of "advisement."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Advisement; observation; deliberation. Marked as obsolete.
The gap here is narrow but worth flagging: in both common and legal usage, the term is effectively a variant spelling of "advisement" that has fallen out of active use. The legal register preserved it somewhat longer than ordinary English, but researchers encountering it in historical sources should treat it as functionally identical to "advisement" in context rather than as a term of art carrying independent legal freight.
Common Confusion
Avisement and advisement are the same concept. The spelling variation reflects the transition from Law French and early Anglo-Norman legal vocabulary into modern English legal writing. Researchers who encounter "avisement" in older reports, plea rolls, or digests should not treat it as a distinct term separate from "advisement." Both describe the same procedural state: a matter held by the court for consideration. Similarly, "advisare volumus" — the Latin formula meaning "we wish to be advised" — is the root phrase underlying both spellings and appears in early English court records as the formal expression of this practice.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a pure historical artifact. Researchers will not find it in modern legal materials; it belongs almost entirely to early English law reports, Year Books, and digests compiled before the mid-nineteenth century. Several navigational points apply:
First, corpus searching: If searching a historical legal corpus for court deliberation practice, researchers should run parallel searches for "avisement," "advisement," and "advisare" (and its variants) to capture the full range of usage across different periods and scribal conventions. Relying on any single spelling will miss results.
Second, indexing traps: Older digests and abridgments may index this concept under "avisement" rather than "advisement," or vice versa, depending on the era of compilation. Burrill indexes it under "avisement" with a cross-reference structure, but not all historical compilers were consistent. Check both headings.
Third, contextual meaning: In historical sources, avisement sometimes appears in the specific context of a court deferring sentencing or judgment, and sometimes in the broader sense of a deliberative pause at any stage of proceedings. The surrounding procedural context — plea stage, post-trial, sentencing — will determine which sense applies. The term itself does not distinguish between these moments.
Fourth, Law French overlay: The Law French root "avisement" (from "aviser," to advise or consider) shaped its early English legal use. Researchers working in Year Books or early English plea rolls may encounter the French-language version alongside or instead of the Anglicized form.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the entry minimal treatment: "L. Fr. Advisement; consideration. Kelham." The citation to Kelham points to Robert Kelham's Dissertation on the Norman Language (1779), a standard reference for Law French vocabulary used in early English legal records, confirming the term's French-language origin and its essentially definitional equivalence to "advisement."
Webster's 1913 marks the common form "advisement" as current and "avisement" as its obsolete variant, consistent with the historical trajectory: the Law French spelling receded as English legal writing standardized. No historical legal dictionary examined here treats "avisement" as carrying a meaning distinct from "advisement" — it is a spelling variant, not a separate concept. This unanimity across sources is itself informative: researchers need not search for a hidden technical distinction between the two forms.
Jurisdictional Note
The term appears in English legal sources and was carried into early American legal writing through inherited common law vocabulary. It has no independent jurisdictional variation; wherever "advisement" is used in practice, "avisement" is simply its historical predecessor.