EXIGI FACIAS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

EXIGI FACIASAuthored

The Law Mind • 742 words

Definition

Exigi facias (Latin: "that you cause to be demanded") is an archaic writ of process used in English common law proceedings. The term derives from the opening command words of the writ of exigent — the formal instrument by which a sheriff was directed to demand the appearance of a defendant who had previously failed to appear in court. Through repeated demands made at successive county courts, the defendant was progressively brought toward a legal reckoning: continued non-appearance could result in a declaration of outlawry.

The phrase exigi facias is not a distinct writ in its own right but rather an alternative name for the writ of exigent, derived from the operative Latin words with which that writ began. Legal writers and court records sometimes refer to the writ by this shorthand in the same way that other common law writs are identified by their operative terms — as with fieri facias, habeas corpus, or certiorari.

---

Common Confusion

EXIGI FACIAS and EXIGENT (also EXIGENT, WRIT OF) are the same instrument. The confusion is one of nomenclature, not substance. Exigi facias is simply what the writ of exigent was called when identified by its opening Latin words. Researchers encountering either term in historical records are looking at the same process. Some historical sources use only one form; others use both interchangeably.

---

Why It Matters in Research

This term is almost exclusively a feature of English common law pleading and procedure prior to the nineteenth-century reforms that abolished outlawry and overhauled process practice. Researchers will encounter exigi facias primarily in:

- Pre-reform English case records and plea rolls, where writs are indexed or cited by their Latin incipit
- Early American colonial and state court records that carried over English process forms
- Treatises on common law pleading (Blackstone, Tidd, Stephen) that catalog the sequential writs leading to outlawry

The principal research trap is assuming exigi facias is a separate writ from the exigent. It is not. When a historical index or digest lists both exigi facias and exigent as entries, they refer to the same instrument. Cross-checking both entries is necessary to capture the full picture.

Because outlawry was effectively abolished in England by statute in the nineteenth century and was never deeply embedded in American federal practice, exigi facias has no operative modern legal significance. Its appearance in contemporary legal writing is historical or comparative only.

Corpus researchers should also note that the term exigible — meaning demandable or requirable — appears nearby in several historical dictionaries and is occasionally confused with exigi facias by non-specialist readers. The two are linguistically related but functionally distinct.

---

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core meaning. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary define exigi facias identically: the emphatic opening words of the writ of exigent, sometimes used as that writ's name. Burrill adds a citation to the Registrum Judiciale, an early English register of judicial writs, lending procedural texture to the definition.

Rapalje & Lawrence provides the thinnest treatment, simply cross-referencing the reader to EXIGENT without independent elaboration — a reminder that some historical dictionary entries function as navigational pointers rather than substantive definitions, and that following the cross-reference is essential.

None of the historical sources address American reception of the writ, its fate under procedural reform, or its relationship to modern process. That silence is itself informative: by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the writ was already receding into history.

---

Jurisdictional Note

Exigi facias belongs to English common law and was inherited unevenly by American jurisdictions. It had no significant independent life in federal practice. Researchers working in early state court records — particularly in jurisdictions that closely followed English common law pleading forms — are more likely to encounter it than those working in equity, chancery, or post-reform civil procedure contexts.

---

EXIGI FACIASmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

-See EXIGENT. EXIGIBLE.-Demandable, requirable. EXILE.- Banishment; the person banished. EXILIUM.-(1) Spoiling. Fleta distinguishes between vastum, destructio and exilium, for he tells us that vastum and destructio are almost the same, and are properly applied to houses, gardens or woods; but exilium is where servants are enfranchised, and afterwards unlawfully turned out of their tenements. (Fleta 1. 1, c. 11.) (2) Exile. Exilium est patriæ privatio, natalis soli mutatio, legum nativarum amissio (7 Co. 20): Exile is a privation of country, a change nge of natal soil, a loss of native laws. EXLEGALITUS.-He who is prosecuted EXLEX.-An outlaw. -Spel. Gloss. ΕΧΟΙΝΕ-ESSOIGNE. - See EssOIN. EXONERATION is where a person or estate is relieved from a liability, by the liability being thrown on another person or estate. The term is chiefly used with reference to questions arising in the administration of estates of deceased persons (and the release of bail, as to which last see EXONERETUR). Thus, if a testator directs his debts to be paid primarily out of his real estate, this exonerates his personalty from liability to the debts. (Duke of Ancaster v. Mayer, 1 Bro. Ch. 454; 1 White & T. Lead. Cas. 564; Wats. Comp. Eq. 1321; Forrest v. Prescott, L. R. 10 Eq. 545.) So, if a married woman joins in mortgaging her land to secure money raised for the benefit of her husband, she is entitled on his death to be exonerated from the charge by causing the debt to be paid out of her husband's estate. 2 Fish. Mort. 682; 2 White & T. Lead. Cas. 919. As to the exoneration of the personal estate of a deceased person from the liability to satisfy a mortgage debt charged on his real estate, see CONTRIBUTION, 3; also, LOCKE KING'S ACT; MARSHALLING. EXONERATION, (of personal estate from pay ment of legacies). 2 Dru. & W. 59.