Definition
A bill of review (more fully, a "bill in the nature of a bill of review") was an equity pleading filed in chancery practice to challenge and seek reversal of a final decree. The phrase "of review" functioned as a qualifying term identifying the purpose and character of the bill — it was a bill *for the purpose of review*, as distinct from an original bill, a bill of discovery, or a bill of interpleader.
Two principal forms existed:
1. Bill of review proper: Filed by a party bound by the original decree, seeking re-examination on grounds of error apparent on the face of the record or newly discovered evidence. This required leave of court.
2. Bill in the nature of a bill of review: Filed by a person who was *not* a party to the original proceeding and therefore not bound by the decree — the form specifically captured in the Rapalje & Lawrence definition. Because the filer was a stranger to the prior decree, no leave of court was required to file, but the filer had to demonstrate a legal interest sufficient to justify intervention in equity.
The unifying purpose of both forms was the same: to place a concluded equitable decree before the court again for re-examination, on the theory that equity would not permit an unjust decree to stand where proper grounds for relief could be shown.
Common Confusion
"Of review" should not be confused with appeal or with a writ of error. An appeal or writ of error lay in courts of law or in the ordinary appellate hierarchy. A bill of review was an independent equitable proceeding in the same court that issued the original decree — a collateral attack within the same forum, not an ascent to a higher tribunal. This distinction matters in historical research: finding a "bill of review" in chancery records does not mean the case was appealed; it means a new equitable action was initiated in the original court.
The bill in the nature of a bill of review (for non-parties) also differs from a bill of intervention or a petition to vacate. The non-party filer was asserting that the prior decree itself was erroneous or inequitable as to interests the original parties did not adequately represent — not merely that the filer had been omitted from process.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-merger equity records — particularly English chancery materials, colonial American chancery records, and state equity courts through the nineteenth century — will encounter "bill of review" and "bill in the nature of a bill of review" as distinct procedural categories. Misreading either as a routine appeal will distort the procedural history of a case.
The fusion of law and equity under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) and equivalent state reforms abolished the bill of review as a named procedural form. Its functions were absorbed into modern vehicles: Rule 60(b) motions for relief from judgment, motions to vacate, and independent equitable actions to set aside judgment where the ordinary motion remedy is inadequate. When researching modern doctrine about collateral attacks on final judgments or the survival of independent equitable actions post-merger, the historical bill of review literature provides the conceptual foundation courts still cite.
The non-party variant (the precise form Rapalje & Lawrence define) has particular relevance to research on third-party standing to challenge judgments, non-party preclusion doctrine, and the limits of res judicata against strangers to a proceeding — all active areas of modern litigation.
For researchers working in specialized review contexts (immigration, tax, administrative law), the term "of review" appears in modern compound forms — "standard of review," "scope of review," "petition for review" — that carry none of the specific chancery meaning. Do not conflate historical bills of review with modern administrative or appellate review standards; they share a word, not a concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence supply the minimum workable definition: a bill filed by a non-party to obtain re-examination and reversal of a decree. This is accurate as far as it goes but omits the parallel form available to parties, which is equally well-established in chancery practice. The definition's focus on the non-party filer reflects the more technically distinctive of the two forms — parties had other remedies (including appeal and rehearing), while non-parties had fewer options, making the bill in the nature of a bill of review their principal equitable vehicle.
Historical treatise literature (Story's Equity Pleadings; Mitford & Tyler on Pleadings in Equity) elaborates the grounds, procedural requirements, and limitations more fully than any single dictionary entry can. Researchers should treat the Rapalje & Lawrence entry as a pointer to that treatise literature rather than a complete account of the doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
The bill of review developed in English chancery and was transplanted into American equity practice in states that maintained separate chancery courts. Its availability and procedural rules varied by state. Some states never had a distinct equity court and handled equitable relief through law courts with limited chancery jurisdiction, affecting how "bills of review" were processed or whether the form was recognized at all.