Definition
Peals is the plural form of "peal" and, in a strictly legal context, appears almost exclusively as a proper noun fragment in the historical name of specific American appellate courts. Black's Law Dictionary notes that the court of last resort in the state of New Jersey was formerly designated by a name incorporating this term, and that the highest court of appeal in New York previously carried a similar designation. Outside of these narrow historical references to specific court names, "peals" has no independent doctrinal meaning in Anglo-American law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The plural of "peal" — a loud ringing of bells, or a set of bells tuned to ring together; also used figuratively for any loud, resonant sound (a peal of thunder, a peal of laughter).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A series of loud sounds, particularly of bells; a set of bells tuned to one another and rung in changes; also a loud burst of sound generally.
The gap here is narrow but worth noting for researchers: encountering "peals" in a legal source almost certainly means it is a fragment of a proper court name rather than any reference to sound. The auditory meaning has no legal application whatsoever.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are unlikely to encounter "peals" as a standalone legal term. Its appearance in historical sources — particularly older New Jersey and New York legal materials — is almost always as part of a court's formal name, not as a term of art. Black's Dictionary entry is conspicuously incomplete as transcribed, suggesting the original entry referred to the "Court of Errors and Appeals" (New Jersey) or the "Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors" (New York), both of which served as courts of last resort in their respective states during the nineteenth century.
Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century New Jersey or New York appellate records should treat any reference to a court whose name appears to incorporate "peals" as a likely truncation or transcription artifact pointing to one of these historical tribunals. Keyword searches in digitized historical legal corpora may return "peals" as a fragment when OCR processes older typefaces, particularly where the surrounding text has been cut off or damaged. Be alert to this as a source of false negatives and misleading hits.
No modern court in the United States uses a name that would produce "peals" as a meaningful fragment or standalone reference.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary's entry is strikingly truncated — the transcribed text reads as though the court's full name was cut off mid-sentence ("the E state of New Jersey"), strongly suggesting a transcription or OCR error in the source material. The substance of the entry, however, is historically grounded: New Jersey's Court of Errors and Appeals operated as the state's highest court from the colonial period until 1947, when the current New Jersey Supreme Court was established under a new state constitution. New York's Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors similarly served as a court of last resort in the early nineteenth century before being replaced by the New York Court of Appeals in 1847.
Historical legal dictionaries treating this entry were responding to a nomenclature that was already fading even as they wrote. No other major historical legal dictionary treats "peals" as a term of independent legal significance.
Jurisdictional Note
The only jurisdictions implicated by this term's legal usage are New Jersey and New York, and only in their pre-twentieth-century appellate court structures. Neither state retains a court whose name would generate this reference today.