Definition
Curia advisare vult (Latin: "the court wishes to consider") is a phrase used in common law courts to indicate that the court is taking time to deliberate before delivering judgment. When a court announces curia advisare vult at the close of argument, it reserves its decision rather than ruling from the bench. Judgment is then delivered at a later sitting.
The phrase appears in law reports in abbreviated form: cur. adv. vult, or simply c.a.v. These abbreviations are common enough in older English and American reports that researchers encounter them without any accompanying explanation.
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Common Confusion
Curia advisare vult should not be confused with a general continuance or adjournment. An adjournment postpones proceedings; curia advisare vult specifically signals that argument is complete and the court has the matter under advisement for decision. The distinction matters when reading reports: c.a.v. tells the researcher that all submissions were in and only the ruling remained outstanding — not that further pleading or evidence was anticipated.
The phrase is also occasionally confused with nisi prius notations in older reports. They serve different functions: nisi prius identifies the trial venue and procedural posture; c.a.v. signals the deliberative pause before judgment at the appellate or superior court level.
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Why It Matters in Research
The chief research value of this phrase is indexical: it tells you where you are in a reported case. When you see cur. adv. vult or c.a.v. in an old English or early American report, it marks the boundary between argument and judgment. The decision that follows — sometimes printed under a separate date heading — is the operative ruling. Researchers who skim past the abbreviation may miss that the case was argued on one date and decided on another, which can matter for sequencing legal developments or understanding the court's composition at the time of decision.
In older nominate reports (the English reporters compiled before the Official Law Reports series), c.a.v. entries can be separated from their judgments by pages or even by volume, depending on how the reporter organized the material. A search for the argument alone, without tracking the subsequent judgment, will leave the research incomplete.
American usage of the phrase declined through the nineteenth century as courts adopted domestic procedural terminology. By the mid-twentieth century, "taken under advisement" or "submitted" had largely displaced the Latin in American practice and reporting. Researchers working in early American state reports — particularly those modeled on English practice before local procedural codes took hold — will still encounter c.a.v. with some regularity.
The phrase has no significant jurisdictional variation in meaning, but its frequency in reports is entirely a function of era and jurisdiction. It is common in English reports from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, appears in early American federal and state reports, and is essentially absent from modern reporting.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje and Lawrence define the phrase cleanly: "The court desires to consider. A deliberation which a court of judicature sometimes takes, where there is any point of difficulty, before they give judgment in a cause." This definition captures the essential function accurately and remains reliable. The entry also notes the standard abbreviations, which is its most practical contribution.
What historical dictionaries of this era tend not to address is the reading practice the abbreviation demands — that is, the need to hunt forward in the reports for the judgment delivered after the deliberative pause. That navigational point is not a matter of legal definition but of research method, and it falls outside what nineteenth-century legal dictionaries were designed to provide.
No meaningful divergence exists among historical sources on this phrase. Its meaning was fixed, its usage consistent, and its decline gradual rather than contested.
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