Definition
Errores is a Latin plural noun meaning "errors." In its specific historical legal sense, it refers to a writ issued after a plaintiff in error had formally assigned — that is, identified and enumerated — the errors alleged to exist in the record below. The writ of errores was a procedural step within the older common law system of error proceedings, functionally distinct from the broader writ of error itself. It signaled that the complaining party had completed the preliminary work of specifying the grounds of challenge and was proceeding to compel the opposite party to respond or appear.
The term appears almost exclusively in historical common law practice and has no surviving procedural counterpart in modern American or English litigation.
Common Confusion
ERRORES vs. WRIT OF ERROR: These are related but not interchangeable. The writ of error was the foundational appellate mechanism by which a superior court reviewed the record of an inferior court for legal error. Errores was a subsequent, subordinate writ issued after the plaintiff in error had assigned (formally listed) the specific errors complained of. The writ of error initiated the proceeding; errores advanced it. Researchers encountering both terms in historical records should not treat them as synonyms.
ERRORES vs. SCIRE FACIAS: Rapalje and Lawrence's cross-reference to scire facias reflects that both writs operated as forms of process compelling a party's appearance or response in a proceeding already underway. They are not the same writ, but they share procedural kinship as instruments of compulsion within proceedings rather than as originating actions.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will almost never appear in post-nineteenth-century legal materials. Researchers encountering errores in historical records — English Year Books, early American reports, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, or colonial-era pleading records — should understand it as a term of art embedded in the machinery of common law error proceedings, a system that modern appellate practice has entirely replaced.
The key research trap is assuming errores simply means "errors" in a generic sense when it appears in a procedural context. In historical pleading records, it signals a specific stage of writ practice: the post-assignment phase. Missing this distinction can lead to misreading the procedural posture of a historical case.
Rapalje and Lawrence's cross-reference to scire facias is instructive for understanding the broader ecosystem. Many writs that once required formal process — including the revival of judgments — were replaced by simple court application as American practice developed. Errores followed the same trajectory into obsolescence.
Researchers working in appellate history, common law procedure, or the history of error correction should map errores onto the modern concept of assignment of error (now typically called specifying issues on appeal or filing a statement of errors), while keeping in mind that the procedural formalism surrounding the historical writ has no modern parallel.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides a compact, accurate description: errores is the writ sued out after the plaintiff in error has assigned his errors, citing Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 20 Q. This is a reliable anchor. Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium is a genuine and authoritative early English treatise on writs, and the citation is consistent with the kind of procedural detail that work contains.
Rapalje and Lawrence do not define errores directly but redirect readers to scire facias, specifically to its use as process or execution in proceedings already underway. Their accompanying note observes that most of the scire facias forms in this category were obsolete or rare even at the time of their writing, with simple court application having supplanted formal writ practice across most American jurisdictions. This is historically accurate and confirms the terminal obsolescence of errores as a functioning procedural instrument.
Neither source addresses errores in any depth beyond its mechanical role. Neither traces its full history within English writ practice or explains how the assignment-of-errors requirement developed and eventually dissolved. Researchers needing that history will need to consult Fitzherbert directly or secondary sources on common law appellate procedure.
Jurisdictional Note
Errores was a creature of English common law writ practice and was carried into early American courts as part of inherited procedural forms. It did not survive the procedural reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in any American jurisdiction. English practice similarly abandoned formal writ-based error proceedings with successive reforms to appellate procedure.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Standards of Review on Appeal (De Novo, Abuse of Discretion, Plain Error) — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia (criminal_230): Provides the modern appellate framework that replaced writ-based error proceedings, including the conceptual successors to assignment of errors.
Harmless Error and Structural Error — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia (criminal_231): Covers the modern doctrine for evaluating whether identified errors warrant reversal, the functional descendant of the substantive questions that writ of error proceedings addressed.