Definition
Court-appointed officers designated to perform the function of summoning and returning a jury when both the sheriff and the coroner are disqualified from acting. The elisors' primary duty is to name and return the panel of jurors in response to a writ of venire facias directed to them. In a broader sense, any persons appointed by a court to execute a writ in the default of both the sheriff and coroner may also be called elisors. Typically appointed in pairs, elisors operate as a last resort within the chain of officers responsible for jury formation.
Why It Matters in Research
Elisors appear almost exclusively in older common-law procedural materials and will rarely, if ever, surface in modern American practice. Researchers encountering the term in historical court records, pleadings, or jury challenge proceedings should understand that their appearance signals a specific procedural anomaly: both the ordinary officer (sheriff) and the backup officer (coroner) were somehow disqualified, most often because they or their close associates were parties to or interested in the litigation.
A critical research trap: Bouvier notes that when elisors return the venire, no challenge is allowed to their array. This is a significant procedural distinction from ordinary jury panels, and it matters when reading historical records of jury challenges. A litigant who might have challenged a sheriff's array had no such remedy once elisors were in play.
Researchers working in colonial and early American records should also be alert to spelling variants. The singular form elisor appears in some sources; the plural elisors is standard. The term may appear in court minutes or orders of appointment without further explanation, assuming the reader's familiarity with the role.
Modern relevance is minimal. The office has been largely absorbed into contemporary statutes governing jury commissioners and clerk-appointed jury officers. Where the term appears in a 19th- or early 20th-century case, it is almost always in the context of a challenge to jury composition or an argument about the regularity of the venire.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionary sources are in close agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's converge on the essential points: elisors are court-appointed persons who execute the writ of venire when the sheriff and coroner are disqualified, and their duty is to choose and return the jury. All three sources trace the office to Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Comm. 355) and Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 158), reflecting the term's deep common-law roots.
Bouvier adds the most procedurally significant detail absent from Black's: that the return of elisors is final and that no challenge to their array is permitted. This is not a minor point — it alters the litigation posture of any party appearing before a jury so constituted, and it is precisely the kind of substantive procedural fact that a researcher relying solely on Black's might miss.
Neither Black's nor Bouvier's addresses what happens if an elisor is also disqualified or refuses to serve, nor do they explain the mechanism by which elisors were appointed in practice. Historical court records and treatises on jury practice are more reliable sources for those procedural details than any of the dictionary entries.
The broader usage — elisors appointed to execute any writ in default of sheriff and coroner — appears in Black's but not in Bouvier's, suggesting Bouvier considered the jury-summoning function the core and definitive use of the term.
Jurisdictional Note
Elisors were a creature of English common law and carried over into early American practice. Their use and continued recognition varied by state as legislatures replaced common-law jury machinery with statutory frameworks. In most U.S. jurisdictions today the office is obsolete or has been replaced by statute; researchers should check whether a given state's historical practice codified or modified the common-law rules before drawing procedural conclusions from general sources.