Definition
Dies intercisi (Latin: "divided days") is a term from Roman law referring to days on which the courts were open for judicial business during only part of the day, as distinguished from days wholly available for or wholly closed to legal proceedings. On such days, certain hours were reserved for religious observance, public ceremony, or other civic activity, while the remaining hours were open to litigation and court business.
The Roman calendar divided days according to their availability for legal proceedings: dies fasti (days fully open to civil process), dies nefasti (days wholly closed), and dies intercisi (days split between permissible and impermissible hours for legal activity). Dies intercisi occupied the intermediate category — neither fully available nor fully unavailable.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and comparative legal scholarship rather than in modern case law or statutory materials. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in:
— Treatises on Roman and civil law, where the Roman calendar's regulation of court days receives systematic treatment. Mackeldey's Handbook of the Roman Law (cited by Burrill as 1 Mackeld. Civ. Law, 24) is the primary treatise source and the logical starting point for deeper research.
— Historical works on the civil law tradition tracing how the Roman distinction between court days and non-court days influenced later European legal systems, including canon law and the early common law concept of court terms.
— Comparative law arguments where counsel or scholars draw on Roman procedural structure to illuminate the historical foundations of modern rules about judicial days, court terms, or dies non juridicus.
The term has no operative modern legal significance in common law jurisdictions. Its value is explanatory and historical: it provides vocabulary for understanding how Roman procedural law structured access to courts around the religious and civic calendar.
Researchers working in historical sources should note that the Latin term is not always glossed in older texts that assume classical legal education. Encountering the term without a gloss in a 19th-century treatise is not unusual.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in full agreement on substance: both define dies intercisi as divided days in the Roman law on which courts were open for part of the day only. Both trace the definition to Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum (cited by Black as "Calvin." and by Burrill as "Calv. Lex. Jur."), a standard reference work for Latin legal terminology that remained authoritative through the 19th century.
Burrill adds the citation to Mackeldey, providing a treatise-level source that contextualizes the term within the broader Roman calendar system. Neither dictionary elaborates on which part of such days was open or closed, or on how the division was determined — detail that requires consultation of the civil law treatises themselves.
Neither source addresses any common law reception of the concept, which is consistent with the term's status as a piece of Roman procedural vocabulary that did not migrate into English law with independent significance.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Roman Law — Procedural Framework; Court Days and Judicial Terms (Historical).