Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "cause to be certified." CERTIORARI FACIAS is the operative command language contained within a writ of certiorari — the words that direct the lower court or official to certify and return the record of proceedings to the reviewing court. The phrase is not itself a standalone writ but rather the verbal core of the certiorari writ, identifying it by its commanding clause in the same way other writs are named by their operative Latin verbiage.
Common Confusion
CERTIORARI FACIAS vs. CERTIORARI: The two are not distinct writs. CERTIORARI FACIAS is the formal Latin command clause; CERTIORARI is the abbreviated name by which the same writ has been known in practice for centuries and remains known today. Researchers should not read the full-phrase form as a separate or more specific instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering CERTIORARI FACIAS in historical legal documents should treat it as equivalent to the writ of certiorari itself. The phrase appears most often in formal writ language, pleading records, and historical common law proceedings where writs were identified by their opening or commanding words rather than by shorthand labels. In modern usage, the shortened form "certiorari" has entirely displaced the full phrase, meaning historical sources from the common law period are far more likely to render the writ by its full Latin command.
The primary research trap is treating CERTIORARI FACIAS and CERTIORARI as distinct instruments. They are not. CERTIORARI FACIAS is simply the grammatically complete Latin construction; "certiorari" is the truncated form that came to dominate legal writing and eventually American appellate terminology. A researcher reading older English common law records, Year Books, or colonial-era American court documents may encounter the full phrase where a modern reader would expect only the abbreviated term.
This term is unlikely to appear in any modern statutory or procedural context. Its relevance is almost entirely confined to historical common law materials. Researchers working with pre-nineteenth-century records — particularly in English ecclesiastical courts, King's Bench proceedings, or early American colonial and state court records — should recognize the phrase on sight and understand it as the ancestor of the certiorari practice that persists today.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treatment is brief to the point of telegraphic: he defines CERTIORARI FACIAS simply as "cause to be certified" and identifies it as "the command of a writ of certiorari." The entry does no more than gloss the Latin and anchor the phrase to its parent writ. Bouvier does not attempt a doctrinal account of certiorari practice here, presumably because a fuller treatment appears elsewhere under CERTIORARI itself.
What historical dictionaries generally omit is any account of how this phrase functioned procedurally — that is, how the certiorari command operated to transfer records, what the return requirements were, and how courts enforced compliance. For that procedural substance, researchers must look beyond the dictionary entry to treatise literature on common law writs, such as Tidd's Practice or Blackstone's Commentaries on the nature of prerogative writs. The dictionary entry for CERTIORARI FACIAS is, in essence, a cross-reference dressed in a definition.
It is also worth noting the entry's juxtaposition with CERVISARI — a Saxon tenure term appearing immediately after in Bouvier. This is alphabetical coincidence, not legal kinship, but researchers skimming the page should not mistake proximity for connection.