Definition
A Latin word meaning "that you cause" or "you cause," appearing not as a standalone legal term but as the operative word embedded in several important writs of the common law. Facias does not function independently; it is the verbal core from which a family of procedural writs takes its name and instruction. The writs built around facias directed an officer — typically a sheriff — to cause something to be done: to cause knowledge to be given, to cause money to be made from goods, to cause persons to come before a court.
The term appears most prominently in:
1. Fieri facias (fi. fa.) — "that you cause to be made." A writ of execution commanding the sheriff to satisfy a judgment from the debtor's goods and chattels.
2. Scire facias — "that you cause to know." A writ requiring a party to show cause why a judgment, record, or letters patent should not be enforced or annulled.
3. Venire facias — "that you cause to come." A writ summoning persons to appear, most familiarly as a jury panel.
4. Levari facias — "that you cause to be levied." A writ directing levy upon a judgment debtor's lands and income.
5. Elegit — though not itself a facias writ by name, it operated alongside fieri facias as an alternative execution remedy; a creditor's choice of elegit rather than fi. fa. carried distinct legal consequences, notably that submitting to elegit was not treated as an act of bankruptcy under English law, whereas suffering execution of a fi. fa. was.
Common Confusion
Researchers encountering "facias" in an index, catalog heading, or abbreviation should not treat it as a self-contained term. The word is meaningless procedurally without its companion verb — fieri, scire, venire, or another. A source referencing "facias" alone is almost certainly using shorthand for one of the named writs, most often fieri facias. Confusion also arises from the abbreviation fi. fa., which appears in older English reports and American equity records without spelling out either word; both words in that abbreviation are forms of facias-family construction.
Why It Matters in Research
Indexing practice in historical digests and abridgments varies considerably. Some older compilations index fieri facias and scire facias under their full names; others use "facias" as a catch-all heading that then subdivides. Researchers working in pre-20th century American or English materials should check both the full writ name and the bare "facias" heading before concluding a topic is absent.
The practical significance of distinguishing among the facias writs is not merely taxonomic. Fieri facias and elegit represented competing creditor strategies in English practice, with different consequences for the debtor's bankruptcy exposure. American courts transplanted fieri facias wholesale but treated elegit unevenly; many American jurisdictions never adopted elegit or abolished it early, leaving fi. fa. as the dominant execution writ. A researcher reading 19th-century American execution law that references the facias writs without specifying which one may be looking at doctrine that applies only in jurisdictions that retained the full English writ system.
Scire facias has a separate research life from the execution writs. It survived in many American jurisdictions well into the 20th century as a quasi-appellate and revival-of-judgment mechanism, long after fieri facias had been absorbed into modern execution statutes. The two should not be researched as interchangeable simply because both carry the facias label.
Venire facias is the ancestor of modern jury summons practice. In historical records of criminal trials, venire facias de novo — a new venire — was the remedy for certain procedural defects in jury selection. Researchers tracing modern voir dire and jury challenge doctrine should trace this writ's history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary agree precisely on the core meaning: facias is the second-person singular present subjunctive of facere, meaning "that you cause" or "you cause." Burrill adds the useful clarification that the word was "selected to express their names" — that is, the writs were named by their most emphatic operative verb rather than by their subject matter, which accounts for why the word appears to modern researchers as oddly disconnected from function.
Rapalje & Lawrence do not define facias directly but illuminate the practical stakes of the facias writs through their treatment of fieri facias and elegit, noting the bankruptcy consequence distinction. This contextual material is more instructive for understanding how practitioners actually deployed these writs than the bare definitional entries in Black's or Burrill's.
None of the historical dictionaries adequately addresses the American divergence from English writ practice, nor the survival of scire facias in American procedure after fi. fa. had been absorbed into statutory execution practice. Researchers should not assume that historical English dictionary entries accurately describe American practice after the mid-19th century.
Jurisdictional Note
American states adopted the facias writs selectively. Fieri facias was nearly universal; scire facias survived in some states as late as the mid-20th century before being displaced by motion practice under reformed civil procedure rules; elegit was adopted in only a handful of American jurisdictions and is now effectively obsolete everywhere. Researchers working across state lines should not assume uniform survival of these writs.