Definition
An archaic and variant spelling of PANEL, used in older legal texts and historical records to refer to the written list of jurors summoned and empaneled to serve in a given case, or to the body of jurors so assembled. In Scots law, PANNEL retains a distinct and specific meaning: the accused person in a criminal proceeding, equivalent to what English and American practice would call the defendant or prisoner at the bar. This dual usage — jury list in English legal tradition, criminal defendant in Scots practice — makes the term's context critical to accurate interpretation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The stomach of a hawk; an obsolete form of "panel."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A kind of rustic saddle; the stomach of a hawk; a carriage for conveying a mortar on a march.
The common-language senses are entirely disconnected from the legal meaning. A researcher encountering PANNEL in a legal manuscript should discard the falconry and saddlery definitions entirely; the word's appearance in a legal record signals either a jury list or, in Scottish sources, the accused party.
Common Confusion
PANNEL and PANEL are functionally the same word in English legal history, with PANNEL representing an older orthographic convention. The confusion risk is low once a researcher recognizes them as variants, but the Scots law meaning — the accused — has no counterpart in the English PANEL, where the term refers exclusively to jurors. Treating a Scottish source's reference to "the pannel" as a reference to the jury would reverse the meaning entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of this entry is disambiguation. A researcher working in English or American sources from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries will encounter PANNEL as a straightforward spelling variant of PANEL and should treat all relevant doctrine, procedure, and case law under that heading. Rapalje & Lawrence's entry confirms this directly, cross-referencing PANEL without restating the doctrine.
The Scots law usage demands more care. In Scottish criminal records, pleadings, and historical treatises, "the pannel" consistently denotes the accused. Researchers using Law Mind's Scottish legal materials — particularly older criminal records, High Court of Justiciary proceedings, or institutional writers such as Hume and Alison — will encounter this usage frequently and must not import English jury-list assumptions into those sources.
Historical spelling instability is a broader trap in legal manuscript research. Before orthographic standardization, legal scribes varied freely between PANNEL, PANNELL, PANEL, and PANNELLE. Search strategies in digitized historical corpora should account for all variants; a search limited to the modern spelling PANEL may miss relevant earlier entries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat PANNEL as a simple cross-reference to PANEL, indicating that by the time of that dictionary's compilation, the variant spelling was recognized as archaic or regional rather than carrying independent doctrinal weight in American and English practice. The entry's truncated text — referencing cases in the "Special Paper for argu-" — confirms it was directing readers to the fuller treatment under PANEL rather than developing a separate definition.
Historical dictionaries generally do not flag the Scots law meaning of PANNEL as the accused, reflecting the English-American orientation of most nineteenth-century American legal reference works. Researchers relying solely on those sources for Scottish legal practice will find them inadequate. The institutional writers of Scots law are the appropriate primary reference for that usage.
Jurisdictional Note
In Scots law, PANNEL as a term for the accused in criminal proceedings persisted in formal and literary usage well into the modern period, though contemporary Scottish practice has largely abandoned it in favor of "accused" or "defendant." In English and American jurisdictions, the word is simply an archaic spelling variant of PANEL with no independent significance.