Definition
A historical English procedural method for assembling a panel of special jurors from which a jury would be selected to try a particular civil action. The process worked in two stages reflected in its name: first, nominating candidates from the sheriff's list by random draw, and then reducing that pool through peremptory strikes by each party.
The proceeding took place before the under-sheriff or secondary (a court officer) in the presence of the solicitors for both parties. Numbered tokens or slips corresponding to persons on the sheriff's jury list were placed into a box and drawn at random until forty-eight persons had been nominated without challenge. Each party then struck off twelve names, reducing the panel to twenty-four, from whom the trial jury was ultimately constituted.
The term names the two mechanical operations of the process as a unit: the random drawing-up of candidates (nominating) and the bilateral elimination of unacceptable jurors (reducing).
Common Confusion
"Nominating and reducing" should not be confused with the ordinary challenge procedures used in common jury selection. The standard voir dire process allows challenges for cause (unlimited) and peremptory challenges (limited by statute or rule). Nominating and reducing was a discrete special procedure applicable only to special juries in England — a category that carried its own separate qualification rules and summoning mechanisms. The peremptory strikes in nominating and reducing were not challenges in the technical sense but rather the mechanical final step of a structured bilateral reduction, applied after random nomination had already narrowed the field.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical English legal sources and in American legal dictionaries that compiled English procedural law for reference purposes. Researchers will not encounter it in American practice materials because special juries and the nominating-and-reducing procedure were never transplanted into American civil procedure in any systematic way.
The term matters primarily in three research contexts:
First, when reading historical English common law sources — particularly 18th and early 19th century treatise literature on jury practice — the phrase appears as a term of art describing a procedure that was standard in commercial cases tried before special juries in England. Researchers working in that period must recognize it as a specific procedural mechanism, not a generic description of jury selection.
Second, when tracing the history of jury selection reform in England, nominating and reducing appears as a reference point. The procedure was associated with the Juries Act 1825 and earlier statutes governing special juries, and its eventual abolition is part of the broader rationalization of English jury law in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Third, American legal dictionaries of the late 19th century — including both editions of Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence — included this term as part of their coverage of English procedural vocabulary that American practitioners and judges might encounter in English authorities. Its presence in these sources does not imply American adoption.
Researchers should be cautious about assuming that descriptions of the procedure are consistent across sources. The surviving dictionary entries are truncated in places, and the precise mechanics (particularly the number nominated and the number struck) should be verified against primary English sources when precision is required.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence present substantively identical definitions, all describing the same core mechanics: drawing from the sheriff's list before the under-sheriff or secondary, reaching forty-eight unchallenged nominees, each party striking twelve, leaving twenty-four. The agreement across all three sources reflects that they were drawing from a common body of English procedural authority rather than independent analysis.
None of the historical dictionary sources identify the specific English statutes governing the procedure, cite treatise authority, or address the procedure's eventual abolition. They present nominating and reducing as an existing practice without historical framing — a limitation researchers should account for when using these entries as starting points rather than endpoints. The truncation visible in the source texts (each entry cuts off mid-description) suggests the full definitions contained additional procedural detail that did not survive in the excerpts available.
Jurisdictional Note
This procedure was specific to England and was never adopted as a formal mechanism in American federal or state courts. American legal dictionaries included it for reference to English authorities, not as a description of domestic practice. Researchers working in English legal history should consult primary English sources and treatises such as Blackstone's Commentaries and Tidd's Practice for fuller treatment.