Definition
A historical designation in English common law procedure identifying those terms of the legal year — specifically Hilary Term and Trinity Term — during which issues of fact were formally made up (joined) between the parties and prepared for trial at the assizes. After these two terms, the judges would go on circuit to try the issues so formed. For causes arising in town (as opposed to country causes bound for the assizes), all four terms of the legal year were considered issuable. The concept is now entirely obsolete, having been abolished by the English Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875, which dismantled the term system as it related to the administration of justice.
Common Confusion
The word "issuable" in this phrase does not mean capable of being issued (as in a writ or order being issued by a court). It refers specifically to the procedural act of making up or joining an issue — that is, the formal identification of the factual question to be submitted to a jury. A researcher encountering "issuable" in historical pleading materials must resist the modern reflex of reading it as relating to the issuance of process or documents.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces in pre-Judicature Act English practice materials, procedural treatises, and any source discussing the administration of the assizes under the common law term system. Researchers working with sources from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century — including Blackstone, Tidd's Practice, or Chitty's General Practice — will encounter references to issuable terms as live procedural concepts. After 1875, any use of the phrase in English sources is historical or retrospective only.
The key navigational point: issuable terms matter for understanding the timing of procedural steps. When historical sources set deadlines, filing requirements, or pleading obligations by reference to Hilary or Trinity terms, the issuable character of those terms is often the reason. A country cause might have had different procedural deadlines than a town cause precisely because only two terms were issuable for assize purposes while all four were issuable for town causes. Conflating these creates errors in reconstructing historical procedural timelines.
Researchers using American sources from the colonial or early national period should be alert to the fact that American jurisdictions inherited the English term system in modified forms, and the concept of issuable terms may appear in early American practice materials with local variations. The term system was abolished at different times in different American states, and some jurisdictions never adopted the English terminology at all.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical sources here are in close agreement on the core definition, all tracing the concept to the same functional logic: Hilary and Trinity Terms were designated issuable because issues were made up during them for the assizes, after which the judges rode circuit to try those issues. Burrill, Bouvier, and Rapalje & Lawrence all cite Blackstone's Commentaries and Tidd's Practice as primary authorities, confirming the narrow doctrinal lineage of the term.
Bouvier is the most precise on obsolescence, noting that the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875 rendered the distinction obsolete — correctly identifying both the 1873 and 1875 Acts, reflecting the phased implementation of the Judicature Act reforms. Rapalje & Lawrence similarly notes abolition under the Judicature Act 1873 and cites section 26 of that Act.
None of the historical sources address American practice directly, which is a gap researchers should note. Black's entry, as preserved here, is fragmentary ("In the former"), but the ellipsis aligns with the expected definition from the other sources.
Jurisdictional Note
This is an English common law procedural concept. Its relevance to American law is limited to jurisdictions and periods in which the English term system was adopted and its procedural calendar followed. American courts largely abandoned formal term-based procedural structures during the nineteenth century, and the concept carries no operative force in any modern jurisdiction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses the English term system or assize procedure. The matching entries provided (tax, employment, international trade terms) are not relevant to this concept.