Definition
Facie is a Latin term meaning "face," "countenance," or "exterior appearance." It does not appear as a standalone legal term but functions as the operative root in several Latin legal phrases still in active use:
1. PRIMA FACIE — "At first face"; on initial or preliminary examination, before investigating further. A prima facie case is one that, standing on its own showing and without consideration of defenses or rebuttal, appears legally sufficient. It is a threshold standard, not a final determination.
2. EX FACIE — "From the face"; apparent from the document or record itself, without need for extrinsic evidence. Used most often in describing whether an instrument is void or valid on its face.
The common thread is externality: facie phrases direct attention to what is apparent, visible, or inferable from the surface of a thing — a document, a pleading, a case — before deeper inquiry begins.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Face" in ordinary English refers to the front of the head, the surface of an object, or a presented appearance. "On its face" is a common idiom meaning apparently or seemingly.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Face" included the visible surface or front of anything, and carried the sense of outward appearance as distinguished from inner reality.
Editorial note: The gap between common and legal usage is moderate but important. In ordinary speech, "on its face" is informal and approximate. In legal usage, "prima facie" and "ex facie" carry precise procedural weight — they trigger specific burdens, govern admissibility determinations, and can be dispositive at particular stages of litigation. A researcher who treats these phrases as mere idioms risks misreading their operative function in a legal text.
Common Confusion
Prima facie is frequently confused with conclusive proof. It is not. A prima facie showing is sufficient to survive a motion or shift a burden, but it remains rebuttable. Separately, prima facie and ex facie are sometimes used interchangeably in older texts, but they are distinct: prima facie concerns the initial sufficiency of a legal case or claim; ex facie concerns what is apparent from the face of a document or instrument itself.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter facie constructions across virtually every area of law — evidence, civil procedure, constitutional law, contract interpretation, and criminal law. Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, OCR and transcription errors are common with Latin phrases. "Prima facie" appears in older digitized materials as "prima facie," "primâ facie," and numerous corrupted variants. Search strategies should account for this variability.
Second, the evidentiary and procedural weight of a prima facie standard shifts across jurisdictions and time periods. In 19th-century sources, prima facie was used more loosely, sometimes meaning little more than "apparently." In modern procedural contexts, it carries a defined burden-shifting function. Reading older cases through a modern procedural lens risks anachronism.
Third, ex facie appears more frequently in Scottish, Commonwealth, and civil law influenced sources than in American common law materials. Researchers in American sources will encounter it primarily in contract and instrument cases; researchers in comparative or historical sources will find it more widely deployed.
Fourth, the source material for this entry was fragmentary and likely affected by OCR corruption — the submitted headword "EF AOCIES" is almost certainly a machine-reading error for a facie phrase. This is itself a useful illustration of the corpus research problem: Latin legal terms are among the most frequent OCR failure points in historical legal texts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines facie by reference to its Latin origin — "face or countenance; the exterior appearance or view; hence, contemplation or study of a thing on its external or apparent side" — and immediately pivots to prima facie as the primary legal application. The definition confirms that the term's legal significance is entirely derived from its role in compound phrases rather than any independent doctrinal meaning.
The source text is truncated in the available excerpt, cutting off mid-sentence in the definition of prima facie case. The partial text confirms that a prima facie case is one which "on its own showing, on a first examination, or without investigating any alleged defenses, is apparently good." This formulation is consistent across editions of Black's and aligns with contemporaneous treatise usage, though later editions expand considerably on the burden-shifting mechanics that the 2nd edition only implies.
Earlier editions of Black's and contemporaneous dictionaries (Bouvier's, Burrill's) largely agree on the surface meaning but differ in emphasis: Bouvier's places more weight on the rebuttable character of prima facie evidence, while Black's 2nd edition stresses the "first examination" framing. Neither early source fully anticipates the procedural formalization of prima facie standards in 20th-century evidence law.