Definition
A Latin writ commanding the execution of a judgment. In historical English practice, *executione facienda* (meaning, roughly, "for causing execution to be done") was a writ issuing from a court to compel enforcement of a judgment that had already been rendered. It functioned as a mechanism to set in motion the satisfaction of a judgment debt or other court-ordered obligation when the prevailing party sought to put the court's decision into effect. The writ belongs to a family of Latin-named execution writs that proliferated under the common law writ system and fell out of use as procedural reform replaced the writ practice with modern civil rules.
The writ is marked as obsolete in the primary sources. It has no direct equivalent in modern civil procedure, though its functional purpose — compelling enforcement of a judgment — survives through contemporary enforcement mechanisms such as writs of execution, garnishment, and contempt proceedings.
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Common Confusion
*Executione facienda* should not be confused with the better-known *fieri facias* (fi. fa.), which was the standard writ directing a sheriff to levy on a judgment debtor's goods to satisfy a money judgment. While both belong to the execution writ family and share the function of enforcing judgments, *fieri facias* remained a living instrument well into the modern period and still appears by name in some jurisdictions, whereas *executione facienda* had fallen entirely from practice and is treated as obsolete even in early twentieth-century sources. Researchers encountering the term in historical records should not treat it as interchangeable with *fieri facias* or with the broader class of *elegit* or *capias ad satisfaciendum* writs, each of which operated against a distinct type of property or person.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Executione facienda* will appear almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English court records, early American colonial or territorial court files, and legal treatises written before procedural reform swept away the common law writ system. Its practical significance in corpus research is primarily historical and taxonomic: it marks a moment in a case record where a judgment creditor was formally pursuing enforcement, and its presence tells a researcher that a judgment had already been entered and that the creditor was taking active steps to collect.
Several research traps apply. First, the phrase is Latin and will appear in source documents in abbreviated or variant forms; scribal abbreviations in old court records may render it nearly unrecognizable without familiarity with the writ vocabulary. Second, because Black's 2nd edition cites Cowell as its source — John Cowell's *Interpreter* (1607/1708) — the writ's documented history runs deep into early modern English law, and researchers working with seventeenth- or eighteenth-century materials should consult Cowell directly for period-accurate usage. Third, the writ's obsolescence means modern secondary sources rarely discuss it with any depth; primary sources and early legal dictionaries are the principal authorities.
For corpus researchers, the presence of this term in a document is a reliable indicator of the document's age and of the common law writ-system context. It is unlikely to appear in any American materials postdating the mid-nineteenth century procedural reforms, and its presence in American records before that point suggests either direct inheritance from English practice or the formalism of early American courts that retained Latin writ nomenclature.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd ed.) provides the only dictionary entry located in the source material: "A writ commanding execution of a judgment. Obsolete. Cowell." The entry is conspicuously spare, which is itself informative — Black's brevity signals that by the early twentieth century this writ had so completely disappeared from practice that extended treatment was unwarranted. The citation to Cowell anchors the writ firmly in early modern English legal practice rather than American development.
The historical record reflects broader patterns: the Latin execution writ vocabulary was extensive, and many individual writs in the family are documented only in glossaries and dictionaries rather than in substantial doctrinal writing. *Executione facienda* appears to occupy that category — a writ real enough to have a name and a function, but specialized or archaic enough that even contemporary treatise writers did not devote sustained analysis to it. Researchers should not expect richer treatment in other historical dictionaries; Cowell and Black's likely represent the primary terminological record in English-language legal reference works.
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Jurisdictional Note
This writ was a creature of English common law procedure and, where it appears in American legal history, reflects the early reception of English writ practice into colonial and early state courts. It has no modern jurisdictional footprint in any U.S. jurisdiction. Research into its application should be confined to English and early common law American contexts.
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