Definition
A formal written account of the proceedings at a trial, endorsed on the nisi prius record after verdict. The postea recorded what occurred at trial — the jury's verdict, the judge's rulings, and other relevant proceedings — and was returned by the trial judge to the court of record. It served as the official documentary bridge between the trial itself and the subsequent steps in the action, enabling the court of record to enter final judgment on the basis of what had actually transpired at nisi prius.
The term derives from the Latin word meaning "afterwards," which was the word with which the entry traditionally began when pleadings and records were maintained in Latin. In the modern English forms that succeeded Latin practice, the entry opened with the translated equivalent: "Afterwards, that is to say..."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The return of the judge before whom a cause was tried, after a verdict, of what was done in the cause, which is endorsed on the nisi prius record."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The return of the judge before whom a cause was tried, after a verdict, of what was done in the cause, which is indorsed on the nisi prius record."
The common and legal definitions here are drawn from legal usage itself — Webster's and Wiktionary both reproduce the technical legal meaning rather than a distinct lay meaning. The term has no ordinary English life outside the law, and the definitions accordingly track the procedural concept directly.
Why It Matters in Research
The postea is a creature of classical common-law practice and is functionally extinct in modern American and English procedure. Researchers encountering the term will almost always be working in historical sources — pre-codification English practice, early American case law, or treatises from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The key navigational point: the postea is inseparable from the nisi prius system. Understanding the postea requires understanding how English common-law courts divided trial functions (handled at nisi prius sittings before a single judge and jury) from the formal entry of judgment (handled back at the court of record in Westminster). A researcher who does not grasp the nisi prius structure will misread the procedural significance of the postea in any source.
In corpus sources, the term appears most frequently in treatises on common-law pleading and practice — Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III), Stephen on Pleading, and Smith's Action at Law are the most commonly cited authorities across all five dictionary sources. Case reports from English common-law courts through the early nineteenth century will contain references to the postea as a routine procedural step; American case law from the colonial and early national periods sometimes follows suit, though American procedural terminology diverged earlier and more sharply than English.
Watch for the Anderson's Dictionary of Law entry in the source material: it does not actually define postea, instead providing definitions for related Latin phrases (post diem, post facto, post hac, post litem motam). This is either a typographical or editorial error in that dictionary and illustrates the hazard of relying on any single historical dictionary for confirmation of a term's meaning.
After the mid-nineteenth century, code pleading (beginning with the Field Code in New York, 1848) and eventually the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) eliminated the procedural architecture that made the postea necessary. The term effectively disappears from practice-oriented sources after codification. Any appearance of postea in twentieth-century sources is almost certainly in a historical or comparative law context.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence offer nearly identical compact definitions, all citing Smith's Action at Law. Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most substantive account, explaining the etymology — the entry was "so called from the word (postea) with which it commenced when the proceedings were in Latin" — and citing both Stephen on Pleading and Blackstone's Commentaries. Burrill also notes the transition to English forms ("Afterwards, that is to say..."), which is genuinely useful context that the other dictionaries omit.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law, as noted above, does not meaningfully address the term and should not be relied upon for this entry.
No source dictionary substantially disagrees with any other on the legal meaning. The primary difference is depth: Burrill's alone situates the term within the procedural history of the Latin-to-English transition in record-keeping. Researchers wanting more than a bare definition should begin with Burrill and follow his citations to Stephen and Blackstone.
Jurisdictional Note
The postea is a common-law English procedural concept. American courts in the colonial and early national periods adopted it as part of received common-law practice, but it never took deep root in American procedure and was rendered obsolete earlier in most American jurisdictions than in England. It has no counterpart in civil law jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Nisi Prius; Common Law Pleading and Practice; Trial Records and Judgment Entry