Definition
A justicier is an old French and Anglo-Norman legal term with two related senses, both rooted in the procedural machinery of early common law:
1. As a verb (to justice): To compel a party to appear in court, to summon them to do justice, or to require compliance with a legal obligation through judicial command. The operative meaning is coercive — to justice someone was to bring them before the law through a formal writ.
2. As a writ form: A class of original writ directed to a sheriff or other officer commanding that a named party be compelled to answer in court or perform some legal duty. The writ issued in the Latin formula: Præcipimus tibi quod justicies [name] — "We command you that you justice [name], that he do...," followed by the specific obligation demanded.
The term belongs to the technical vocabulary of the writ system and does not describe a judicial office or a judicial officer, notwithstanding superficial resemblance to terms like "justice" or "justiciary."
Common Confusion
JUSTICIER should not be confused with JUSTICIARY or JUSTICIAR, which denote a judicial officer or high-ranking judge. Justicier here is a writ command — a verb nominalized from French procedural language — not a title. The confusion is easy in older texts where the Latin and French forms of related words appear in close proximity. A researcher encountering "justicies" in a medieval writ is reading an imperative verb form, not a reference to a person holding judicial authority.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in English legal sources predating the systematic reform of the writ system. Researchers working in the Register of Original Writs (Registrum Omnium Brevium), Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, Bracton's De Legibus, or Fleta will encounter it in the standard writ formulae reproduced in those texts. Its significance is procedural: identifying that a writ is of the justicier type tells the researcher what the plaintiff sought — not a judgment on the merits, but compulsion to appear or perform.
Key navigational points:
First, the term survives into modern English practice only as a relic. Burrill notes it was retained but little used even at the time of his writing. A researcher finding it in 19th-century English pleading materials should treat it as archaic usage, likely quoted from older precedent books rather than active practice.
Second, the writ form using justicies operated as a command to a sheriff or local officer — structurally similar to a præcipe writ — and should be read in connection with the broader Register of Original Writs when tracing the procedural history of a cause of action.
Third, the French origin matters for reading manuscript sources. In Year Books and early plea rolls where Law French dominates, the verb "to justice" and its conjugated forms will appear without explanation. Researchers unfamiliar with the term may misread it as a noun referring to a judge or justice, distorting their interpretation of procedural passages.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical dictionary source for this term, and its treatment is concise but precise. Burrill correctly identifies the French origin, gives the Latin formula as it appears in the writ registers, and cites the principal sources: Registrum Omnium Brevium (fol. 135, 139), Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (117 C, 119 G–K), Bracton (fol. 231, 308b), and Fleta (lib. 2, c. 62, § 2). This constellation of citations places the term squarely in the foundational literature of the early common law writ system.
Burrill's observation that the writ was "retained though little used" in modern English practice at his time is itself historically informative — it marks the term as surviving in form books and precedent collections well past the period of its practical utility.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus provide significant independent treatment of this term. Its specialized character means it tends to disappear from later dictionaries that rationalized and simplified writ vocabulary. Jacob's Law Dictionary and Tomlin's Law Dictionary, where consulted, generally redirect readers toward the broader writ classifications without dwelling on the individual Latin and French command verbs.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the English common law writ tradition and its Anglo-Norman procedural inheritance. It has no recognized American counterpart — U.S. courts never adopted the original writ system in the form that generated this terminology. Researchers working in American materials will not encounter it except in historical or comparative discussions.