Definition
An old French law term meaning "day in court" — specifically, the day assigned to a party to appear before a court. Jour in court is the scheduled opportunity a defendant or other party has to be heard, corresponding to the appearance day established by process. The phrase captures the foundational procedural concept that every party summoned by legal process is entitled to a fixed day on which to appear and answer.
The term is now archaic in active legal use but persists in historical legal materials, particularly those drawing on English common law procedure before the consolidation of modern civil practice rules.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Jour" in English carries no standard entry as a standalone word; it is recognized as the French word for "day."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry. "Jour" appears only in compounds such as "journeyman," derived from the French "journée" (a day's work).
The gap here is total rather than partial: "jour in court" is not an English phrase in any common sense. A researcher encountering it in historical legal documents should not treat it as a colloquial or self-evident expression. Its meaning is entirely technical and draws on Law French vocabulary that was standard in English pleading through the seventeenth century.
Common Confusion
Jour in court, journe, and journée are closely related Law French terms appearing in historical sources that are often run together or confused:
- JOUR IN COURT: the assigned appearance day; the procedural slot given to a defendant by process.
- JOURNE / JOURNEE: more broadly, any day, court day, or the day of holding a court. Burrill distinguishes this: "A la journee" (at the court) appears in the Statute of Westminster I.
- JOURNES ACCOMPTS (journées accompts): a distinct procedural term related to the accounting of days; found in the same cluster of Law French vocabulary but serving a different function.
Researchers working in pre-modern English reports and plea rolls may encounter all three forms in close proximity. They are related but not interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a fossil of Law French procedural vocabulary. Its chief research significance is twofold.
First, chronological: "jour in court" appears primarily in materials predating the English procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. Researchers working in Year Books, early common law treatises, or pre-Judicature Act plea records will encounter it in contexts describing the mechanics of original process and appearance. The phrase signals that the surrounding material is describing old common law pleading procedure, not modern practice.
Second, the term anchors an important procedural principle — that every defendant served with process acquires a right to be heard on a specific day — that persists in modern law under different terminology (return day, appearance date, arraignment). Understanding jour in court helps researchers trace the lineage of notice and appearance requirements from their common law origins to contemporary procedural rules.
The Hale citation used in both Black's and Burrill ("Every process gives the defendant a day in court") is from Matthew Hale's Analysis of the Law, a skeletal outline of English common law that circulated widely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Researchers should be aware that both dictionaries draw on the same single source for this entry — their entries are effectively identical — so the evidentiary base for this definition is narrow.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's entries are nearly word-for-word identical, both quoting Hale's Analysis of the Law, section 8. Neither dictionary offers elaboration beyond the bare equivalence: jour in court = day in court = appearance day. Neither discusses the term's relationship to journe or journée, though Burrill places those entries immediately following and implicitly treats them as a cluster of related Law French terms.
What the historical dictionaries miss: neither source contextualizes jour in court within the broader system of original process — writs of summons, capias, and distringas — in which the assigned day in court was the procedural endpoint of the writ's command. The significance of the term is better understood when read alongside treatises on common law pleading (Gould, Chitty, Stephen on Pleading) rather than isolated as a standalone definition.
Burrill's additional adjacent entries on journaunte (daybreak) and journe are useful indicators that this vocabulary cluster belonged to a living Law French lexicon, not merely to formal legal Latin. Researchers should treat the Burrill entry as slightly richer than Black's for navigating related terms in historical materials.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Criminal Contempt of Court (criminal_262) — relevant for understanding the court's authority to enforce the appearance obligation that jour in court establishes.