DUZEIN

Definition

An Anglo-French legal term meaning "twelve," used specifically to denote a jury of twelve persons. The phrase *la petite duzein* refers to the petty jury — the trial jury of twelve that determines questions of fact in a cause.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering *duzein* or *la petite duzein* in early legal records, Year Book transcripts, or Anglo-Norman pleading documents should recognize this as a jury reference, not an administrative or procedural term of independent significance. The term appears almost exclusively in Law French sources from the medieval and early modern English legal tradition; it does not survive into modern legal usage in any recognizable form. The principal navigational risk is simple non-recognition. A researcher unfamiliar with Law French may pass over *duzein* without identifying it as a jury term, or may fail to connect it to the broader vocabulary of trial procedure in the Year Books. It sits in the same conceptual cluster as *jurata*, *pais*, and *visne* — terms that, taken together, describe the jury as an institution across different linguistic registers of early English law. Note also that Burrill's entry runs *duzein* directly into *dwelling-house* without a section break, which reflects the compressed format of mid-nineteenth century law dictionaries. Researchers working from digitized or transcribed versions of Burrill should be alert to this collapsing of entries, which can create confusion about where one definition ends and another begins.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source providing a definition, and its treatment is brief: *duzein* is glossed as Law French for "twelve; a jury of twelve," with *la petite duzein* identified as the petty jury. The supporting citation is to the Year Books, Trinity Term, 4 Edward III, folio 21 — a medieval English common law source consistent with the term's currency in the Anglo-Norman legal vocabulary of the fourteenth century. No other historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus appear to carry this entry. The term is absent from later general legal dictionaries, reflecting its obsolescence well before the nineteenth century consolidation of legal vocabulary. Tomlin, Bouvier, and Black's do not include it. This gap is itself informative: *duzein* is a fossil term preserved in Burrill precisely because Burrill drew heavily on earlier civilians and common law antiquarians who worked with Law French sources directly.

Jurisdictional Note

This term belongs exclusively to the historical English common law tradition and has no currency in any modern jurisdiction. It is relevant only to historical legal research involving medieval and early modern English court records, Year Books, or Anglo-Norman pleading documents.

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