Definition
De audiendo et terminando (commonly abbreviated or referenced as de audiendo) is a Latin phrase meaning "for hearing and determining." It refers to a class of royal or judicial commissions issued to appointed commissioners authorizing them to hear and decide particular matters — typically serious criminal offenses — within a specified jurisdiction or territory. The commission empowered its recipients both to receive the charges (audiendo) and to bring them to final judgment (terminando), functioning as a grant of jurisdictional authority rather than a standing court.
In historical English law, a writ or commission de audiendo et terminando was issued under royal authority, typically in response to riots, insurrections, or other grave disturbances requiring swift local justice. The commissioners were not permanent judicial officers; their authority was bounded by the specific mandate of the commission itself.
Common Confusion
De audiendo is frequently encountered as shorthand for de audiendo et terminando, and the truncated form may mislead researchers into treating the two phrases as distinct instruments. They are not: de audiendo alone describes only the hearing function, while the full commission requires both elements. Additionally, researchers should not conflate commissions de audiendo et terminando with commissions of gaol delivery, which were a distinct species of commission concerned with clearing prisoners from custody for trial, rather than with the original grant of jurisdiction to hear and determine specific offenses. Both forms could be issued to the same commissioners simultaneously, which contributes to the confusion in historical sources.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical legal sources and is rarely encountered in modern legal writing outside of historical scholarship. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English legal materials, colonial American records, or early common law treatises will encounter it most often in the context of special commissions and extraordinary criminal procedure.
The critical research trap is treating de audiendo as a standalone term when it almost always appears as part of the paired phrase de audiendo et terminando. Sources that abbreviate or truncate the phrase may leave the second half implicit; the "hearing" function is incomplete without the "determining" function, and the two together define the jurisdictional grant. A commission that authorized only hearing without determination would be anomalous and likely ineffective.
Researchers should also note the relationship between this commission and the oyer and terminer doctrine — which is the direct common law descendant and Anglicized form of the same concept. Courts of oyer and terminer in American colonial and early state practice derive their authority structure directly from the de audiendo et terminando commission tradition. Any research into early American criminal tribunals, grand jury practice, or extraordinary sessions courts should trace backward through this Latin form.
The Rapalje & Lawrence source material retrieved alongside this term concerns "days" entries and appears to reflect an indexing artifact rather than a substantive treatment of de audiendo. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence for this term should search under the full phrase de audiendo et terminando and cross-reference under oyer and terminer.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence does not appear to provide a substantive independent entry for de audiendo as a standalone term. The source material associated with this entry in the Law Mind corpus reflects adjacent index matter (days-related entries and parliamentary writ references) rather than direct treatment of the commission form itself.
Historically, Bouvier's Law Dictionary and similar nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries treat the concept under oyer and terminer, acknowledging the Latin origin while organizing the substantive doctrine under its Anglicized form. This reflects a broader pattern in American legal lexicography: Latin commission terminology was progressively displaced by English equivalents as American courts moved away from direct citation of English crown practice. Researchers should expect the substantive doctrine to be richer in English sources — particularly Coke, Blackstone's Commentaries, and Hale's Historia Placitorum Coronae — than in American dictionaries of the same period.
Jurisdictional Note
The commission form originates in English law and passed into colonial American practice, where courts of oyer and terminer were established by statute or charter in most colonies. After independence, American states retained oyer and terminer courts in varying forms — some as permanent tribunals, others as special sessions. The Latin commission form itself ceased to have operative legal significance in American practice by the early nineteenth century, though the term persists in historical records.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Standards of Review on Appeal (De Novo, Abuse of Discretion, Plain Error) — for orientation to Latin-derived procedural concepts in criminal law contexts.