Definition
A term from Old Scots law meaning "appeared" or "has appeared," used to record that a party formally presented themselves before a court or tribunal. Comperit is the past tense form indicating that appearance had occurred, functioning as a term of entry in criminal and civil proceedings to note a party's presence on the record.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early Scottish legal records — particularly criminal trial records, justiciary proceedings, or court registers predating the eighteenth century — will encounter comperit as a standard notation of appearance. It is not a substantive legal term carrying rights or consequences in itself, but rather a procedural marker essential for reading the record correctly. Misreading or overlooking it can cause confusion about whether a party was present, defaulted, or was represented. Because the term is Latinate in form but Scots in application, it may appear alongside other mixed Latin-Scots legal vocabulary common to early Scottish court documents. Researchers unfamiliar with Old Scots legal Latin may conflate it with the distinct Latin term compertum (meaning "it has been found" or "it is established"), which carries evidentiary rather than procedural weight. The corpus of early Scottish criminal proceedings, including Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, uses comperit as a near-formulaic entry notation, so fluency with the term is essential for reading those records accurately.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical shelf source to treat comperit, and its entry is characteristically spare: it gives the Old Scots gloss "compeared; appeared" and anchors the term to Pitcairn's Criminal Trials (Part 1, p. 2). This is consistent with the term's narrow scope — comperit is a record-keeping notation rather than a term with doctrinal content, and so broader historical dictionaries that focus on legal concepts rather than procedural vocabulary naturally pass over it. Burrill's cross-reference to Pitcairn is the most useful navigational guide available: that compilation remains the primary scholarly edition of early Scottish criminal proceedings and provides the most concentrated corpus of comperit usage. No divergence between historical sources exists because no other historical source addresses the term directly. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as a pointer to primary sources rather than as a full account of the term's use.
Jurisdictional Note
Comperit is specific to Old Scots legal practice and will not appear in English, American, or continental European legal records. It is effectively obsolete in modern Scottish law, where appearance is recorded in contemporary procedural language.