Definition
A term of Scots law with two related but distinct meanings:
1. False making; forgery. The fabrication or fraudulent creation of a document or instrument. The phrase "falsing of evidentis" (evidents) appears in early Scottish criminal records and refers specifically to the forging or falsification of documentary evidence.
2. Making or proving false. More broadly, the act of demonstrating that something — a document, a judgment, or a legal finding — is false, erroneous, or unjust.
FALSING OF DOOMS: A specific application of the second meaning. In Scots law, the formal process of proving the injustice, falsity, or error of a doom — that is, a judgment or sentence of a court. Depending on the source, it is described variously as the reversal of a sentence, a form of appeal, or the demonstration that a prior judgment was wrongly rendered. The term captures both the substantive claim (the judgment is false or unjust) and the procedural mechanism (the proceeding to establish that fact).
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): False decoding by a telecommunications decoder — a technical term in signal processing describing a decoder's error in misreading a signal.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No relevant entry. The word "falsing" does not appear as a standalone term in Webster's 1913; "false" and its derivatives are present but carry only general senses of deception or inaccuracy.
The modern telecommunications usage and the Scots legal meaning share no functional relationship. A researcher encountering "falsing" in a legal source should not import any connotation from the modern technical sense. The legal meaning is archaic, jurisdiction-specific, and procedurally grounded in ways the common-language usages do not illuminate.
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Common Confusion
FALSING vs. FALSIFICATION: These are related but not identical. Falsification in modern usage typically denotes the act of altering or fabricating a document. Falsing, in its Scots law sense, can mean either the act of forgery (similar to falsification) or the act of proving something false (which is almost the opposite — a remedial or appellate function). A researcher must determine from context which meaning is operative.
FALSING OF DOOMS vs. APPEAL: The sources use these as rough equivalents, but the procedural mechanics differ from a modern appeal. Falsing of dooms was a Scots law process with its own formal requirements and was not a general-purpose review mechanism. Treating it as simply synonymous with "appeal" in a modern sense risks anachronism.
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Why It Matters in Research
FALSING is a narrow, archaic term encountered almost exclusively in Scots law sources and early Scottish criminal records. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside that context, but when they do, two traps arise.
First, the dual meaning creates interpretive ambiguity. In any given source, "falsing" may describe the crime of forgery/document fraud or the remedy of proving a judgment wrong. These are functionally opposite — one is a wrong committed, the other is a correction sought. Context and the specific phrase used (falsing of evidentis vs. falsing of dooms) are the primary disambiguating signals.
Second, the sources themselves are not consistent. Black's and Burrill treat "falsing" as primarily meaning forgery, with "falsing of dooms" as a derivative phrase. Bouvier leads with "making or proving false" without foregrounding the forgery sense. Bell's Dictionary (cited in Bouvier) and Skene and Tomlins (cited in Black's 2nd ed. for falsing of dooms) are the deeper Scots law authorities behind these definitions. Researchers working in Scottish legal history who need to go beyond these secondary dictionary entries should work back to those primary Scots law sources.
The term has no meaningful presence in English common law and does not appear in American legal materials in any operative sense. It is essentially a research curiosity except for historians of Scots criminal procedure.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: falsing means false making or forgery, and the phrase "falsing of dooms" refers to a process of challenging or reversing a court judgment. All sources point to the same early authority — Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland — for the "falsing of evidentis" usage, suggesting this is the primary documentary anchor for the term's forensic/forgery sense.
The dictionaries diverge modestly on falsing of dooms. Black's 2nd ed. is the most detailed, distinguishing three characterizations: proving the injustice of a sentence (Tomlins/Jacob), reversing a sentence (Skene), and appeal (Bell). Bouvier and Burrill are briefer. No source treats these characterizations as contradictory; they appear to reflect the term's practical range rather than genuine disagreement.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any procedural detail: how falsing of dooms was initiated, before what tribunal, under what standard. For that, a researcher must consult Scots law primary sources directly. The dictionary entries are definitional snapshots, not procedural guides.
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Jurisdictional Note
Falsing is a term of Scots law exclusively. It has no recognized equivalent in English common law, and American courts and statutes do not use the term. Researchers working in English or American legal sources who encounter the word are likely dealing with a citation to or quotation from a Scots law source.
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