Definition
A term from Saxon and early English law referring to procedural irregularities in court proceedings. The term carried at least two related meanings in historical usage: (1) an unjust or irregular summoning of a party to court, and (2) the act of speaking unsteadily or inconsistently in court, including varying or departing from one's own plea. Both senses describe a defect in the formal conduct of legal proceedings — one going to how a party was brought before the court, the other to how a party presented their position once there.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A wrong citation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry found; the term does not appear to have had established common usage in nineteenth-century American English.
The gap between the modern popular gloss and the historical legal meaning is significant. The Wiktionary definition — "a wrong citation" — captures a thin slice of one meaning at best and does not reflect the procedural and pleading dimensions that defined the term's legal use. Researchers encountering "miskenning" in historical legal texts should not rely on the modern popular definition.
Common Confusion
Miskenning is occasionally confused with related concepts of misnomer or misjoinder, perhaps because all involve some form of procedural error. They are distinct. Misnomer concerns incorrectly naming a party. Misjoinder concerns improperly joining parties or claims. Miskenning, by contrast, concerns either the irregularity of the summons itself or inconsistency in a party's own plea and court speech. The Bouvier's entry reproduced under this term in the source materials is in fact a passage about misjoinder — a transcription or compilation error in that dictionary — and should not be read as defining miskenning.
Why It Matters in Research
Miskenning is an archaic term with no continuing presence in modern legal doctrine. Its research value is almost entirely historical: it appears in sources addressing Saxon law, early English procedure, and the transition from pre-Norman to common law forms of pleading. Researchers working in that period should note the dual meaning carefully. The summoning sense touches on jurisdiction and process; the plea-variation sense touches on early rules of pleading consistency — a precursor to the common law principle that a party could be bound by prior statements in open court.
The Bouvier's entry in this source set is corrupted. The passage reproduced under "Miskenning" in Bouvier's is plainly a fragment discussing misjoinder of plaintiffs in equity, with citations to New York, Alabama, Ohio, and Florida chancery decisions. This has nothing to do with miskenning. Researchers using Bouvier's as a source should be aware that this entry is unreliable as printed and should cross-reference Black's and Burrill's instead.
The term appears in Cowell's Interpreter, Blount's Law Dictionary, and Spelman's Glossarium — the three antiquarian sources cited consistently by Black's and Burrill's — and that is where primary source verification should begin for any serious historical inquiry.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's are in close agreement, offering nearly identical definitions and citing the same three antiquarian authorities: Cowell, Blount, and Spelman. This consistency suggests all three modern dictionaries drew from the same small pool of early sources rather than independent derivation. None of the three expands meaningfully on the definition or provides contextual examples from case law, which reflects the term's status as a historical curiosity rather than a living legal concept by the time these dictionaries were compiled.
Burrill's adds an adjacent entry for MISLIER (Law French: to choose the wrong; to mistake, citing Kelham), which suggests a cluster of early terms addressing procedural or cognitive error in court proceedings. This contextual placement in Burrill's is useful for researchers mapping the vocabulary of early English procedural defects.
None of the historical dictionaries address whether miskenning carried formal consequences — whether a court could void proceedings on this ground or impose penalties — which is a gap that limits the utility of dictionary sources alone for doctrinal historical research.
Jurisdictional Note
Miskenning is a term of English legal history with no independent development in American law. It does not appear in American statutory or case law as a term of art. Its relevance to American legal research is confined to comparative legal history and the study of early common law origins.