Definition
In Scots law, to shut up a jury after a case has been submitted for deliberation. The act of enclosing a jury marks the formal moment at which the jury is separated from the public and placed under the supervision of court officers while it considers its verdict. The term is confined almost entirely to the Scottish criminal procedure context and does not carry independent technical meaning in English or American common law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To surround with a wall, fence, or similar barrier; or to insert something into a container such as an envelope or package.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To inclose. See Inclose." The 1913 Webster's treats enclose and inclose as interchangeable, directing readers to the latter form, which carries the general sense of surrounding or shutting in.
The gap here is specific but important: in ordinary English, enclosing something means surrounding or containing it in a physical or spatial sense. In Scots legal usage, the term describes a precise procedural act — the formal sequestration of a jury at the close of evidence and argument. A researcher encountering "enclose" or "enclosure of the jury" in a Scottish legal source should not read it as a general spatial metaphor but as a term of art for what modern procedure would call jury sequestration or retiring to deliberate.
Common Confusion
Researchers may conflate this term with SEQUESTRATION OF THE JURY or, in American sources, with locking the jury. These concepts are functionally related but procedurally distinct in their historical contexts. Additionally, enclose (or inclose) appears frequently in English property law in the context of ENCLOSURE — the act of fencing open or common land — which is an entirely separate legal concept. Context in the source document is essential: property law versus criminal procedure determines which meaning applies.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a narrow but genuine trap for researchers working in Scottish legal history or comparative criminal procedure. The word's ordinary English meaning (to surround or insert) and its heavy use in English property law (enclosure of common lands) create two distinct interference patterns that can cause misreading of Scottish criminal sources.
The historical dictionaries are consistent and unanimous: enclose as a term of art belongs to Scots criminal practice, specifically to the procedural moment when a jury is committed to deliberation under custody. The reference across all four source dictionaries to Alison's Criminal Practice (Vol. 2) identifies that work — Archibald Alison's Principles of the Criminal Law of Scotland and Practice of the Criminal Law of Scotland — as the authoritative primary source for this usage. Researchers needing depth on the procedure should consult Alison directly.
Because the term does not appear as a term of art in English or American sources in this sense, a researcher using a general English law dictionary or an American treatise will find no useful entry. The absence of the term from those sources is itself informative: it confirms the concept is jurisdiction-specific.
The phrase "enclosure of the jury," cited in Burrill from Alison at page 635, is the nominal form researchers are most likely to encounter in historical Scottish case reports or procedural texts. Flag this phrase when indexing or searching — it is functionally the heading under which the procedure is discussed, not merely a descriptive phrase.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill — provide materially identical definitions, differing only in minor phrasing. There is no divergence or contradiction among them. All four cite the same passage in Alison's Criminal Practice, volume 2, page 634, as their authority. Burrill adds the additional citation to page 635 for the nominal form "enclosure of the jury," which is a useful supplementary pointer.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any procedural context: how long a jury could be enclosed, what conditions applied, what happened if a juror became ill, or how enclosure interacted with verdict delivery. For that level of detail, Alison's treatise is the necessary next step. The dictionary entries function here as a finding aid and term-of-art flag, not as a procedural guide.
None of the entries address whether the concept survived into modern Scottish procedure or whether it was replaced by statutory language. Researchers working with post-19th-century Scottish materials should verify whether the term of art persisted or was displaced by statutory reform in criminal procedure legislation.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to Scots law and Scots criminal procedure. It does not appear as a legal term of art in English common law or American law. English and American researchers encountering the term in a Scottish source should treat it as equivalent in function to jury sequestration during deliberations, but should not assume procedural equivalence in detail.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: JURY — DELIBERATION AND SEQUESTRATION
See also: SEQUESTRATION; ENCLOSURE (property law, for the distinct land-use concept)