Definition
Entry of cause for trial was a procedural step in English common law practice by which a plaintiff formally brought a civil action before the court for trial. Having given notice of trial to the opposing party, the plaintiff deposited the nisi prius record—along with the panel of jurors annexed to it—with the proper officer of the court. This act formally placed the issue before the court and was a prerequisite to the cause being heard at nisi prius.
The procedure was not a substantive legal concept but a ministerial and procedural act: the physical delivery of the record that triggered the court's authority to proceed with trial. Without this step, the case remained in a kind of procedural limbo even after notice of trial had been given.
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Common Confusion
Entry of cause for trial should not be confused with notice of trial. Notice of trial was the prior step—the plaintiff's communication to the defendant that trial would be sought at a particular sitting. Entry of cause for trial was the subsequent, distinct act of actually depositing the record with the court officer. The two were sequential obligations, not synonyms. Historical sources occasionally use them loosely, which can mislead researchers working with older English pleading records.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely confined to historical English common law practice and will surface primarily in pre-nineteenth-century English procedural materials, pleading treatises, and nisi prius records. Researchers should treat it as a term of art tied specifically to the nisi prius system—the practice under which common law actions were tried at assizes before a judge sitting in the county, rather than at Westminster.
The term has essentially no modern American counterpart. American procedural systems did not adopt the nisi prius record-deposit mechanism in the same form, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and their state equivalents govern trial scheduling through entirely different mechanisms (case management orders, trial calendars, and the like). If this term appears in an American source, it will almost certainly be in a historical or comparative context, or in a jurisdiction that retained English procedural forms well into the nineteenth century.
The key research trap is anachronism: applying modern procedural concepts to understand what this step accomplished. In the nisi prius system, the record was a physical document of great significance—it constituted the court's authority to act. Depositing it with the court officer was not a clerical formality in the modern sense but a jurisdictionally consequential act. Researchers working with English chancery or common law records from roughly the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries should understand that an action in which the plaintiff failed to complete this step could be treated as not properly before the court for trial purposes.
For Law Mind corpus researchers, this term is likely to appear in English pleading and practice manuals (such as those addressing nisi prius procedure), in forms books, and in treatises on common law actions. It connects directly to the broader nisi prius procedural framework and to materials on joinder of issue and trial preparation in the common law tradition. Cross-reference with entries on NISI PRIUS, NOTICE OF TRIAL, and RECORD for a complete picture of the procedural chain.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only direct entry in the available sources, and its definition is terse but accurate: the plaintiff deposits the nisi prius record with the panel of jurors annexed, after having given notice of trial, thus bringing the issue before the court. This captures the essential mechanics.
What Black's does not address is the consequence of failure—what happened if the plaintiff gave notice but did not complete the entry. Treatise literature on nisi prius practice makes clear that the entry was not optional; without it, the cause was not properly before the court and the trial could not proceed. Black's definition also does not situate the term within the broader sequence of pre-trial steps, which a researcher relying solely on it might miss.
The definition has remained stable across Black's editions, reflecting the term's frozen historical status: it describes a defunct procedure and is not subject to ongoing doctrinal development.
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Jurisdictional Note
This procedure was specific to English common law practice and the nisi prius system. It did not translate wholesale into American practice, though some early American states modeled their procedural rules closely on English forms. Researchers working with records from colonial or early republic-era American courts should check whether the particular jurisdiction adopted English nisi prius procedures before assuming this term has the same meaning in an American source.
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