Definition
Brevia selecta (abbreviated Brev. Sel.) is a Latin phrase meaning "choice" or "selected writs." The term refers to a collected set of writs — both original writs (used to commence proceedings) and judicial writs (issued during the course of litigation) — gathered or compiled as representative or particularly useful forms. The phrase functioned less as a term of art naming a discrete legal doctrine than as a descriptive label for compilations of writ forms used by practitioners and clerks in the common law tradition.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering Brev. Sel. in historical legal texts should recognize it primarily as a bibliographic and documentary reference rather than a substantive legal concept. The abbreviation signals a citation to a writ formulary or writ collection — the kind of practitioner's reference work that circulated widely in the era of common law pleading when the precise form of a writ was outcome-determinative.
The critical navigational point: when a historical source cites Brev. Sel., it is almost certainly pointing to a published collection of writ forms, not to a freestanding legal rule. Researchers tracing the authority of a particular writ form in pre-nineteenth-century common law materials must identify which specific compilation is being referenced, as multiple works carried similar titles or abbreviations.
Because the writ system was abolished or substantially reformed in England by the Common Law Procedure Acts of the mid-nineteenth century and in most American jurisdictions through the adoption of code pleading and later notice pleading, Brevia selecta and similar writ compilations belong squarely to the historical research context. They will not appear in modern procedural materials but are essential reference points for research touching on pre-reform common law practice, early American colonial and federal courts, and the forms of action.
The maxim cited in Black's — Brevia, tam originalia quam judicialia, patiuntur Anglica nomina ("Writs, as well original as judicial, bear English names") — is itself a useful research signal. It reminds the researcher that despite the Latin label of the compilations, the individual writs within them (trespass, assumpsit, replevin, and so on) carried English designations. A researcher confused by Latin case headings or pleading terminology can use this maxim as an orientation point: the writ's operative name in practice was typically the English form.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the essential entry: Brevia selecta means choice or selected writs, abbreviated Brev. Sel., and encompasses both original and judicial writs. Black's appends the maxim from Coke (10 Co. Rep. 132) regarding the English naming of writs, which situates the term within the broader common law tradition of treating writ names as terms of art in English despite the Latin scholarly and pleading apparatus surrounding them.
Black's entry is characteristically compressed. It identifies the meaning and the supporting maxim but does not identify which specific published compilation or compilations the abbreviation most commonly referenced, nor does it trace the bibliographic history of writ collections as a genre. Researchers should be aware that the entry reflects the term's function as a citation shorthand rather than as a fully theorized legal concept. Historical dictionaries that deal more extensively with writ practice — including Giles Jacob's Law Dictionary and later editions of Bouvier — provide supplementary context on the forms of action and the role of writ formularies in common law pleading, though they may not use this precise term.