Definition
An erroneous or corrupt judgment rendered by an inferior court not of record. In historical English and French law, false judgment was both a substantive wrong and a procedural mechanism: a writ of false judgment lay to bring the record of an inferior court — such as a county court or court baron — before the courts at Westminster, where the judgment could be reviewed and reversed. Unlike a writ of error, which operated on courts of record, the writ of false judgment was the appropriate remedy when the lower tribunal kept no formal record and its proceedings could not otherwise be brought up for appellate scrutiny.
In old French law, the concept carried a more accusatory character: the losing party could formally charge the judges or peers of the inferior court with having pronounced a false or corrupt judgment, a challenge that could proceed to trial — including, in some periods, by combat or by the ordeal of the peers.
Common Confusion
False judgment should not be confused with writ of error. Both were historical mechanisms for reversing inferior court decisions, but they operated in different procedural worlds. Writ of error applied to courts of record, which preserved written proceedings that could be examined on appeal. The writ of false judgment was the distinct remedy for courts not of record, where no such written record existed. Researchers encountering either term in historical sources should check whether the court below was a court of record before assuming which procedure governed.
False judgment also should not be confused with false imprisonment, with which it shares only an adjective. The two doctrines are entirely unrelated.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is effectively obsolete in modern law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in historical legal materials — medieval and early modern English and French sources, treatises on common law procedure, and colonial American records where county and manor courts operated outside the formal record system.
Several navigational traps are worth flagging. First, the term carries two distinct legal traditions in the sources: the English writ tradition (a procedural remedy directed upward to Westminster) and the French appeal tradition (an accusatory proceeding directed at the judges themselves). A source that treats false judgment as purely procedural may be drawing on English practice; one that describes a challenge or combat element is likely drawing on French or Norman custom. These traditions should not be conflated.
Second, because the writ of false judgment was tied to courts not of record, its practical scope shrank as the formalization of court record-keeping expanded. By Blackstone's era, the writ was already an antiquity in functional terms, though it persisted in treatise discussions of theoretical common law procedure. Researchers using 18th- and 19th-century sources should treat coverage of this writ as descriptive of historical practice, not live law.
Third, Rapalje & Lawrence's entry directs readers to Hall's New York records, which suggests the writ had some presence in early American colonial court practice — a corpus connection worth pursuing for researchers working in colonial or early republic procedural history.
Finally, the Latin forms — falsum judicium and breve de falso judicio — appear in medieval sources alongside the English terminology. Researchers working in Latin legal texts should recognize these as the same concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition: a writ lying to reverse the judgment of an inferior court not of record, brought before the courts at Westminster. Burrill provides the fullest technical account, citing Blackstone (3 Bl. Com. 34, 406) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — the two primary authorities — and drawing the explicit contrast between courts of record and courts not of record that distinguishes this writ from writ of error. Black's and Bouvier's are consistent with Burrill on the English side, both citing Fitzherbert.
Black's alone adds the French law dimension — that a losing party could accuse the judges of corrupt judgment, with the issue determined by challenge — though the entry is fragmentary in the source material provided, suggesting the full account was longer in the original. Burrill also notes the French appeal of false judgment but frames it more briefly.
What the historical dictionaries largely omit is any discussion of how this writ worked in practice in American colonial courts, where informal tribunals without formal records were common. Rapalje & Lawrence's reference to Hall's New York records hints at this gap in the treatise literature. The dictionaries treat false judgment as a historical English curiosity rather than engaging with its American trajectory.
Jurisdictional Note
Primarily an English common law concept. The writ had some presence in early American colonial practice where courts not of record operated, but it did not survive as a live procedural mechanism into the modern American court system. Researchers working in civil law or mixed jurisdictions will find the French law tradition of false judgment — with its accusatory and potentially combative character — to be a distinct strand, not merely a variant of the English writ.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia: Enforcement of Judgments — Execution, Domestication, and Post-Judgment Discovery (remedies_73) — for context on how judgments are reviewed, challenged, and enforced in the modern framework that replaced historical remedies like the writ of false judgment.