Definition
A term from Scots law referring to the act of a judge or court taking a case under private consideration before delivering a judgment. To "make avizandum" is to withdraw a matter from open court for further reflection, reserving decision until the judge has had opportunity to deliberate. The term functions both as a noun (the period of deliberation itself) and as a verbal phrase (the act of making that reservation). A case taken to avizandum is not dismissed or continued — it is held sub judice while the court considers its decision privately.
Common Confusion
Avizandum is sometimes loosely equated with a general continuance or adjournment, but the distinction matters. An adjournment postpones court proceedings outright; avizandum specifically marks the moment when argument is closed and the case passes entirely into the judge's private deliberation. No further submissions are ordinarily received once avizandum is made. Researchers should also note the corrupted form "Grizandum" appearing in the second edition of Black's Law Dictionary — this is a typographical error for avizandum and does not represent a separate term.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely confined to Scots law and Scots legal procedure. Researchers working in English common law sources will rarely encounter it, and when they do, it typically signals either a Scots case being cited in an appellate context (particularly in House of Lords appeals from Scottish courts) or a comparativist discussing judicial deliberation practices. Its practical importance in historical research lies in understanding how Scots court records and law reports are structured: the phrase "took the case to avizandum" or "made avizandum" in a report marks the formal close of oral proceedings and signals that the judgment to follow was issued after private consideration rather than from the bench immediately.
Because the term appears in Scottish appeal records that reached the House of Lords — a significant source in British legal history — researchers using pre-1800 British materials may encounter it in contexts that initially look like English proceedings. The Bell's Appeal Cases citations in Burrill confirm this appellate dimension.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is a known defect in that dictionary's coverage: the entry for avizandum is a stub that redirects to "advowtry," which is almost certainly a typographical or editorial error. Researchers should not treat this as authoritative and should rely instead on Burrill and Bouvier for historical lexical purposes.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in broad agreement on the core meaning, though they vary in richness. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier give the same terse one-line definition derived from Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland, establishing that avizandum involves moving a case from public court to the judge's private consideration. This is accurate as far as it goes.
Burrill offers the most useful treatment. He correctly identifies the Latin root (from avisare, to advise or deliberate), situates the term firmly in Scots practice, and provides three illustrative quotations drawn from Brown's Reports and Wilson & Shaw's Reports that demonstrate the term in actual judicial use across different court levels — the Lord Justice Clerk, the Lord Ordinary, and the sheriff court. Burrill also notes the apparent synonymy with advisement, the comparable English concept, which is the most practically useful cross-reference a historical researcher can draw.
The historical dictionaries universally fail to address the procedural consequences of avizandum — what happens to the parties, whether supplemental submissions are permitted, or how the term interacts with limitation of time for judgment. These questions require recourse to Scottish procedural texts rather than legal dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Avizandum is a term of Scots law with no functional equivalent phrase in English common law jurisdictions, though the underlying concept (a judge reserving judgment after argument) is universal. In English practice the closest functional equivalent is "reserving judgment" or, in historical usage, "taking time to advise." The term may appear in New Zealand and Australian legal writing where Scots-derived legal culture had some influence, but it carries no formal procedural status outside Scotland.