Definition
Fice (also rendered as Fyce or Ficer) is an archaic English legal term denoting the Queen's Coroner and Attorney in the criminal department of the Court of Queen's Bench. This officer prosecuted criminal matters at the relation of a private person or common informer, with the Crown serving as the nominal prosecutor. The position was formally established and regulated by statute (6 & 7 Vict. c. 20) and was later absorbed into the broader structure of the Supreme Court of Judicature following the Judicature Acts of the 1870s. After reorganization, the Crown side practice of what became the Queen's Bench Division continued largely unchanged, though the distinct office of Fice ceased to exist as a separate designation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An initialism for "field inversion capillary electrophoresis," a laboratory technique in biochemistry. Also used informally in some regional American dialects as a variant spelling of a small mixed-breed dog.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A small dog" — written also fise, fyce, fiste, etc. Identified as a Southern U.S. regional term.
Neither the scientific abbreviation nor the regional term for a small dog bears any relationship to the legal meaning. A researcher encountering "fice" in a historical legal text should not allow either common usage to create interpretive confusion; the legal term refers exclusively to a specific English court officer and has no connection to its homonyms in ordinary language.
Common Confusion
Fice is sometimes confused with the broader role of the Attorney General or Solicitor General, who also conducted Crown prosecutions. The distinction is procedural: the Fice acted specifically in the criminal department of the Queen's Bench upon the relation of a private informer, not as a general representative of the Crown's prosecutorial authority. Researchers may also conflate this office with that of the Master of the Crown Office, a related but distinct position. Additionally, the variant spellings (Fyce, Ficer, Fise) across historical sources can cause indexing difficulties in corpus searches.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a narrow historical artifact of English court administration and will appear almost exclusively in materials predating the Judicature Acts (1873–1875) or in commentaries discussing pre-reform English criminal procedure. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should note several navigational challenges.
First, spelling instability is significant. The term appears in variant forms across primary and secondary sources, and corpus searches limited to a single spelling will miss relevant materials. Running searches across fice, fyce, ficer, and fise is advisable.
Second, the statutory anchor (6 & 7 Vict. c. 20) is the key primary source for understanding the formal contours of the office. Rapalje & Lawrence note that following judicial reorganization the officer became an officer of the Supreme Court, meaning materials from the 1870s onward may reference the same functional role under different nomenclature or without any distinct title at all.
Third, this office is embedded in a specific procedural context — prosecution by relation of a private informer — which connects to the broader history of common informer practice in English law. Researchers tracing the decline of private prosecution in England will encounter the Fice as one institutional node in that transition.
Fourth, because the term is almost entirely absent from American legal sources, it should be understood as a purely English jurisdictional artifact. Any appearance in American materials will likely be in comparative or treatise contexts discussing English procedure.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in close agreement on the core definition, with only minor differences in phrasing. Both identify the officer as the Queen's Coroner and Attorney in the criminal department of the Court of Queen's Bench, both cite the same statute (6 & 7 Vict. c. 20), and both note the Crown's role as nominal prosecutor with a private person or common informer providing the relational basis for prosecution. Rapalje & Lawrence add the post-reform gloss that the officer became part of the Supreme Court structure and that Crown-side practice in the Queen's Bench Division continued unaltered — a detail Bouvier's omits, likely reflecting the earlier vintage of that edition or its American audience's lesser need for post-reform English procedural detail. Neither source provides substantial doctrinal analysis; both treat the entry as a concise institutional description rather than an analytical definition. Wharton's Law Dictionary (cited by Bouvier's) is noted as an additional source but not separately excerpted.
Jurisdictional Note
Fice is exclusively an English legal term with no American or Commonwealth equivalent. It reflects a stage of English court organization that was superseded by the Supreme Court of Judicature Acts. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or colonial legal materials should not expect to encounter this office in those jurisdictions.