Definition
De cursu (Latin: "of course") is a term describing proceedings, writs, or steps in litigation that issue or occur as a matter of course — that is, automatically and as a routine formality, without requiring special application, judicial discretion, or extraordinary justification. The phrase operates as a classifier, distinguishing ordinary procedural machinery from proceedings that require affirmative judicial intervention.
Two distinct applications appear in the historical sources:
1. Proceedings de cursu: The usual, necessary, and formal steps in an action — summons, pleadings, standard filings — that proceed as a matter of established procedure. These are contrasted with summary proceedings or incidental steps taken on motion or at the court's discretion.
2. Writs de cursu: Writs issued as a matter of course by a ministerial officer of the court upon proper request, without requiring a judge's individualized approval. These are contrasted with prerogative writs, which required the court's discretionary grant and were reserved for extraordinary relief.
Common Confusion
De cursu is most usefully understood in contrast to two related categories. Prerogative writs — including writs of mandamus, prohibition, and certiorari in their historical forms — required the applicant to show cause and obtain judicial sanction. A writ de cursu required no such showing; it issued on demand as a routine matter. Separately, summary proceedings stand in contrast to de cursu proceedings: de cursu proceedings follow the full, formal procedural path of an action, while summary proceedings abbreviate that path. Researchers should not conflate the two contrasts — the writ/prerogative distinction and the formal/summary distinction are parallel but separate uses of the same phrase.
Why It Matters in Research
De cursu is primarily a term of historical procedural law, most likely to surface in pre-twentieth-century English and American sources dealing with common law pleading and writ practice. Its significance in corpus research is largely taxonomic: the term served as a label that courts and treatise writers used to categorize procedural steps and writs, and understanding it unlocks the organizational logic of older procedural discussions.
Several research traps apply. First, the term appears without definition in many historical sources because contemporaneous readers were expected to know it. Burrill cites Fleta and the Registrum Brevium, placing the term's active use well within the medieval and early modern common law tradition. Researchers encountering de cursu in those contexts should treat it as a signal that the surrounding discussion concerns the formal, routine channel of litigation as opposed to an exceptional remedy.
Second, the writ de cursu / prerogative writ distinction has real downstream importance for understanding judicial review history. Prerogative writs evolved into modern extraordinary remedies; the de cursu writs evolved into or were absorbed by standard civil process. Sources that track this evolution will use de cursu as a baseline from which the prerogative writ tradition diverges.
Third, because de cursu describes procedural normalcy, its absence in a source — or a court's refusal to treat a proceeding as de cursu — often signals contested or unusual procedure worth examining closely.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) give virtually identical definitions, confirming the term was settled in meaning by the late nineteenth century. Both editions use the same two-part structure: de cursu proceedings versus summary/incidental proceedings, and writs de cursu versus prerogative writs. The consistency across editions suggests no meaningful doctrinal shift occurred in that period.
Burrill's entry is thinner — essentially a bare Latin gloss with citations to Fleta, the Registrum Originale, and Sir William Scott's admiralty decision in The Fortuna — but the citations are informative. Fleta (a thirteenth-century English legal treatise) and the Registrum Originale (the official register of writs) place de cursu at the heart of classical English writ practice. The admiralty citation is notable: it suggests the term carried procedural weight in maritime contexts as well, though Burrill does not develop this point.
None of the historical dictionaries trace the decline of the term or note its obsolescence — a gap researchers should account for. De cursu writ practice as such ended with the abolition of the forms of action and the consolidation of civil procedure under the Judicature Acts in England and the Field Code reforms in the United States. The term survives in legal dictionaries largely as historical context rather than operative doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
De cursu is a term of English common law origin and appears most frequently in English and early American sources. Its relevance diminishes sharply in American jurisdictions after procedural reform in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Civil law jurisdictions do not use the term.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Standards of Review on Appeal (De Novo, Abuse of Discretion, Plain Error) — useful for understanding the broader tradition of procedural classification that de cursu reflects, including how courts distinguish routine from discretionary review.