HABEAS CORPORA JURATO

2 definitions found across Law Mind sources

HABEAS CORPORA JURATOAuthored
The Law Mind • 857 words
Definition
A writ issued out of the Court of Common Pleas in English practice, commanding the sheriff to compel the appearance of a jury in a civil cause pending between named parties. The writ directed the sheriff to have the bodies of the jurors present before the court at the appointed time, ensuring that a duly summoned jury actually appeared to hear the matter. It served the same procedural function in the Common Pleas as the writ of distringas juratores served in the King's Bench — that is, both were mechanisms for enforcing jury attendance when a panel had been summoned but jurors risked failing to appear. The writ is now abolished, having been swept away by the Common Law Procedure Act (England, 1852), which rationalized and consolidated much of the machinery of common law civil procedure. ---
Common Confusion
HABEAS CORPORA JURATO should not be confused with HABEAS CORPUS. Despite sharing the Latin root habeas (that you have) and the word corpora (bodies), these are entirely distinct writs directed at different persons for different purposes. Habeas corpus commands a jailer or officer to produce the body of a detained individual before a court to inquire into the lawfulness of that detention — it is a writ of liberty. Habeas corpora jurato commands a sheriff to produce the bodies of jurors to constitute a panel — it is a writ of jury assembly. The superficial Latin similarity has caused historical conflation, but the legal operation, the target, and the constitutional significance of the two writs are unrelated. ---
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a pure historical artifact. Researchers will encounter it only in sources predating or discussing pre-1852 English common law civil procedure, and almost exclusively in the context of jury process in the Court of Common Pleas. Several navigational points matter: First, the court-specific nature is a research trap. The parallel writ in the King's Bench — distringas juratores — performed the same function but bore a different name and issued from a different court. Sources discussing jury compulsion in King's Bench proceedings will use distringas juratores; sources discussing Common Pleas proceedings will use habeas corpora jurato. Researchers looking for the full picture of pre-reform jury attendance enforcement must consult both terms and understand which court's records they are in. Second, abolition by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 means that any English procedural source after that date discussing this writ is either historical commentary or treating it as a matter of legal history. The writ has no modern operational counterpart under that name. American jurisdictions did not transplant this specific writ into their practice as a distinct form; colonial and early republic American procedure often adapted English jury process mechanisms but typically through local statute or rule rather than by preserving the writ under its Latin name. Third, the writ belongs to a cluster of pre-reform English jury management writs — including the venire facias, the distringas juratores, and the tales de circumstantibus — that together composed the procedural scaffolding for assembling civil juries. Researchers examining early English trial records, Year Books, or Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III) will need familiarity with this full cluster to understand how jury panels were summoned, compelled, and supplemented. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus treating this term, and it does so concisely and accurately. Bouvier identifies the writ's court of origin (Common Pleas), its commanding officer (the sheriff), its target (the jury), its functional equivalent (distringas juratores in the King's Bench), and its abolition, with a cross-reference to Blackstone's Commentaries, Book III, page 354. This entry is reliable as far as it goes. What Bouvier does not address — and what no single dictionary entry fully illuminates — is the place of this writ within the broader architecture of pre-reform civil jury process. Blackstone's Commentaries, Book III, remains the primary narrative source for understanding how habeas corpora jurato fit into the sequential procedural steps by which a Common Pleas jury was assembled, and why a separate compulsion mechanism was needed after the initial venire facias had issued. Researchers seeking that operational context should go directly to Blackstone rather than relying on dictionary treatment alone. No meaningful divergence exists among historical sources on this term, likely because it is narrow, technical, and uncontroversial — a mechanical writ of court administration rather than a doctrinal concept. ---
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively a product of English common law procedure in the Court of Common Pleas and has no direct American counterpart under this name. American courts developed their own mechanisms for compelling jury attendance through local statutes and rules. Researchers working in early American federal or state court records should look to jurisdiction-specific procedural statutes rather than expecting to find this Latin form in domestic American practice. ---
Related Terms
Habeas Corpus Distringas Juratores Venire Facias Tales de Circumstantibus Common Law Procedure Act 1852 Court of Common Pleas (English) King's Bench Jury Array Sheriff (procedural role) Jury Compulsion
HABEAS CORPORA JURATOmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
RUM (Lat. that you have the bodies). In English Practice. A writ issued out of the common pleas, commanding the sheriff to compel the appearance of a jury in a cause between the parties. It answered the same purpose as a distringas juratores in the king's bench. See 3 Bla. Com. 354. It is abolished by the Common-law Pro- cedure Act. HABEAS CORPUS (Lat. that you have the body). A writ directed to the person detaining another and commanding him to produce the body of the prisoner at a certain time and place, with the day and cause of his caption and detention, to do, submit to, and receive whatsoever the court or judge awarding the writ shall consider in that behalf. Habeas Corpus is an appropriate proceeding for determining whether one held under an extradition war- rant is a fugitive from justice; and he should be discharged if he shows by competent evidence, overcoming the presumption of a properly issued warrant, that he is not a fugitive from the demanding State. 207 U. S. 100. Although the power exists and will be exercised in cases of great importance and urgency, a Federal court or a Federal judge will not ordinarily interfere by habeas corpus with the regular course of the procedure under state authority, but will leave the petitioner to exhaust the remedies afforded by the State for determining whether he is legally restrained of his liberty, and then to bring his case to this court by writ of error under § 709, Rev. Stat. 205 U. S. 178. This is the most famous writ in the law; and, hav- ing for many centuries been employed to remove Illegal restraint upon personal liberty, no matter by what power imposed, it is often called the of liberty. It takes its name from the characteristic words it contained when the process and records of the English courts were written in Latin: great writ Præcipimus tibi quod CORPUS A B in custodia ves- tra detentum, ut dicitur, una cum causa captionis et detentionis suce, quocunque nomine idem A B censeatur in eadem, HABEAS coram nobis apud Westm. &c. ad subjiciendum et recipiendum ea quæ curia nostra de eo ad tunc et ibidem ordinari con- tigerit in hac parte, etc: There were several other writs which contained the words habeas corpus; but they were distin- guished from this and from one another by the specífic terms declaring the object of the writ, which terms are still retained in the nomenclature of writs: as, habeas corpus ad respondendum, ad testifican- dum, ad satisfaciendum, ad prosequendum, and ad faciendum et recipiendum, ad deliberandum et re- cipiendum. This writ was in like manner designated as habeas corpus ad subjiciendum et recipiendum; but, hav- Ing acquired in public esteem a marked importance by reason of the nobler uses to which it has been de- voted, it has so far appropriated the generic term to itself that it is now, by way of eminence, com- monly called The Writ of Habeas Corpus. The date of its origin cannot now be ascertained. Traces of its existence are found in the Year Book 48 Ed. III. 22; and it appears to have been familiar to, and well understood by, the judges in the reign of Henry VI. In its early history it appears to have been used as a means of relief from private restraint. The earliest precedents where it was used against the crown are in the reign of Henry VII. Afterwards the use of it became more frequent, and in the time of Charles I. it was held an admitted constitutional remedy; Hurd, Hab. Corp. 145; Church, Hab. Corp. 8. In writing of procedure in the thirteenth century the recent work which throws so much new light upon the early history of English law, says: "Those famous words habeas corpus are making their way into divers writs, but for any habitual use of them for the purpose of investigating the cause of impris- onment we must wait until a later time." There is also a reference to what is termed the use of habeas corpus as "at one time a part of the ordinary mesne process in a personal action," also referred to as "the Bractonian process which inserts a habeas cor- pus between attachment and distress," which (ha- beas corpus) a little later seems to disappear. No other allusion is made to the subject; 2 Poll. & Maitl. 584, 591. A still later writer who is as earnest in tracing the fountains of English law to a Roman source, as the writers last quoted are indisposed to do so, says on the subject: "The presence in the Pandects of every important doctrine of habeas corpus is an interesting fact, and suggests that the proceeding probably came to England, as it did to Spain, from the Roman law. There is no evidence, so far as I have been able to discover, that the process was of British or Teutonic origin. It is fully described in the forty-third book of the Pandects. The first text is the line from the Perpetual Edicts, ait prætor: quem liberum dolo malo retines, exhibeas. The prætor declares: produce the freeman whom you unlawfully detain. The writ was called the interdict or order'de homine libero exhibendo. After quoting

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