Definition
A writ issuing from a superior court directing an inferior court, judge, or officer to proceed no further in a matter pending before it. The writ operates as a prohibition or stay, commanding that proceedings be halted — either entirely or until some condition is satisfied or some defect is corrected.
In its narrower historical usage, non procedendo also referred to a writ of excuse or discharge obtained by persons summoned to attend assizes or to serve on a jury, freeing them from that obligation. In this sense it was less a prohibition addressed to a court and more a personal dispensation granted to an individual subject to a public duty.
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Common Confusion
Non procedendo is closely related to, and historically overlaps with, the writ of prohibition. Both issue from superior courts to restrain inferior proceedings. The distinction, where courts drew one, was largely one of timing and framing: prohibition typically prevented a court from assuming jurisdiction in the first instance, while non procedendo could issue to arrest proceedings already underway. In practice, the two terms were sometimes used interchangeably in older English practice, and researchers encountering either should treat them as functionally adjacent without assuming a sharp doctrinal boundary.
Non procedendo should not be confused with supersedeas, which stays the enforcement of a judgment already rendered rather than halting proceedings still in progress.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Two functionally distinct uses appear in the historical record:
1. Non procedendo as a restraining writ directed to an inferior court or officer — analogous to prohibition — commanding that proceedings stop.
2. Non procedendo as a personal discharge writ — obtained by individuals summoned to assizes or jury service — relieving them of attendance. Bouvier's entry addresses this second use specifically, referencing the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.) as its source.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term presents a genuine research trap. A researcher encountering "non procedendo" in historical English or early American legal sources may find it pointing to either of two entirely different procedural contexts — court restraint or personal jury discharge — with little internal signal distinguishing them. The surrounding procedural context must be read carefully.
The term belongs to the family of Latin prerogative and supervisory writs that defined the supervisory relationship between English superior courts (principally King's Bench) and inferior tribunals. This writ system was substantially displaced in American federal practice by statutory and rule-based mechanisms, and in English practice by the Judicature Acts of the 1870s and subsequent reforms. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century English or colonial American materials will encounter it with some regularity; researchers in modern American materials will find it almost entirely absent from live doctrine, surviving mainly in historical analysis or in courts surveying the ancestry of modern supervisory jurisdiction.
The jury-discharge sense has no modern American procedural analog under that name. Excusal from jury service is now purely statutory and local-rules based. Attempting to map the historical writ onto modern jury-excuse practice would be anachronistic.
The Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.) cited by Bouvier is a printed English formulary of original writs, a standard reference tool of classical common law practice. Encountering that citation should orient the researcher toward the English writ-system context and away from any statutory or civilian framing.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary confines its treatment to the jury-discharge sense, describing the writ as available to those summoned to attend assizes or sit on a jury who wished to be freed and discharged. The entry is brief and citation-only in character, pointing to Reg. Orig. 100 without elaboration on conditions for issuance or the process for obtaining the writ.
Bouvier does not address the court-restraint sense under this heading, though that usage is documented in English practice literature. The omission may reflect the diminished relevance of the writ in American practice by the time of Bouvier's compilation, or simply a choice to treat the prohibition function under the heading of prohibition itself. Researchers should not read Bouvier's silence on the restraint function as evidence that non procedendo lacked that meaning — other historical sources, including English practice manuals and abridgments, record both senses.
No significant divergence among historical dictionaries can be assessed here, as only Bouvier's entry was provided. Standard caution applies: single-source historical entries should be cross-checked against Termes de la Ley, Jacob's Law Dictionary, and Tomlin's Law Dictionary for earlier English usage, and against American abridgments for colonial and early national reception.
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Jurisdictional Note
Non procedendo as a named writ has no surviving independent existence in modern American federal or state practice. Its functions have been absorbed into statutory stays, writs of prohibition (where those survive), mandamus practice, and injunctive relief. English law similarly retired the classical writ form through procedural reform. Research into the term's active legal force is necessarily historical.
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