Definition
Latin: "the court will advise" or "the court will consider." A phrase appearing in case reports to signal that a court has heard full argument but is suspending judgment to deliberate further before issuing a decision. It indicates neither a ruling for nor against either party — only that the court requires more time to consider the matter, typically because the question presented is novel, difficult, or otherwise demands careful reflection.
The phrase is almost always abbreviated in practice: cur. adv. vult or c.a.v. These abbreviations appear frequently in older English and Commonwealth reports and occasionally in American materials, sometimes without explanation.
Common Confusion
Curia advisari vult is sometimes read as a procedural defeat or an indication of judicial uncertainty in a negative sense. It is neither. It signals deliberate caution, not weakness — historically it was an expected and respected judicial practice, particularly in common law courts when confronted with a question of first impression. Researchers should not treat a report entry of "cur. adv. vult" as a disposition; it precedes the actual disposition and simply marks the gap between argument and decision.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap is treating cur. adv. vult as the end of a case. In older English reports, it marks a break in the narrative — the judgment that follows may appear in a later term's report, sometimes in a different volume or reporter entirely. Cases reported only up to the cur. adv. vult notation may be incompletely reported, meaning the actual decision was either never published, published elsewhere, or appeared in a later report under a slightly variant case name.
In English appellate practice, the phrase appears heavily in reports from the King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer through the nineteenth century. After the reorganization of English courts and the establishment of the Law Reports series in 1865, the notation became less common as reporting conventions standardized, but it does not disappear entirely from Commonwealth sources.
American reporters borrowed the phrase and the abbreviation, particularly in early state court reports from the colonial and early republic periods, where English practice heavily influenced both the bench and the bar. Researchers working in early American case law — particularly before roughly 1830 — will encounter c.a.v. or cur. adv. vult and should be alert to the possibility that a finding in one volume does not reflect the final resolution.
The phrase also connects to the broader procedural concept of reservation of judgment, which sits in the Law Mind corpus alongside related practices such as taking a case under advisement. Understanding curia advisari vult is foundational to reading old reports accurately: it tells you where you are in the proceeding, not what the proceeding decided.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's are in close agreement on the core meaning. All three sources define the phrase as a suspension of judgment after argument pending deliberation, all three note its association with novel or difficult questions, and all three identify the standard abbreviations cur. adv. vult and c.a.v.
Burrill adds a useful gloss: the suspension "was equivalent to an adjournment of the cause" — a helpful framing for researchers who need to understand the procedural effect rather than just the linguistic meaning. This equivalence to adjournment explains why the final judgment often appears in later-term reports rather than immediately following the argument.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the reporting hazard: none of them warn researchers that cur. adv. vult often marks the edge of an incomplete report. This is the critical gap between what the dictionaries say and what a working researcher needs to know.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase originates in English common law and is most heavily concentrated in English and Irish reports. It appears in early American state reports but is rare in American federal practice, where courts more commonly used the phrase "taken under advisement." Commonwealth jurisdictions — particularly Australia and Canada — continued using the phrase and its abbreviations into the twentieth century.