Definition
A preme is a supplementary clause added to an ordinary subpoena, specifically a clause of requisition that particularly designates the document or documents the witness is required to produce. In practice, a preme transforms a standard subpoena ad testificandum — which compels a witness to appear and testify — into an instrument also demanding the production of specified materials, functioning in a manner analogous to what is more commonly called a subpoena duces tecum. The preme is the designating language itself: the particularized identification of the document appended to the base subpoena form.
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Common Confusion
PREME vs. SUBPOENA DUCES TECUM: These terms describe overlapping but not identical concepts. A subpoena duces tecum is the name for the complete writ commanding both appearance and document production. A preme, technically, is the specific clause of requisition within or appended to the subpoena that identifies the documents to be produced — it is the operative designating language, not the writ itself. In practice, however, historical sources sometimes use these concepts interchangeably, and the distinction is largely one of drafting mechanics rather than legal effect. Researchers should not assume a source using "preme" is referring to a distinct procedural instrument separate from the subpoena duces tecum framework.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is rare in modern legal writing and has effectively disappeared from contemporary procedural vocabulary. Researchers encountering "preme" in historical materials — particularly those dealing with federal practice under the Revised Statutes — should recognize it as a term of art from nineteenth-century American procedural practice, not a term they are likely to find in modern court rules or secondary sources.
The Anderson's entry connects this term to Rev. St. § 863, which governed the examination of witnesses in federal proceedings. That statutory context is critical: the preme's function was specifically tied to the federal procedural framework for compelling witness testimony and documentary production, and its meaning cannot be fully understood without that legislative backdrop. Researchers working with federal court records from the post-Civil War era through the early twentieth century may encounter this term in writ language, clerk's notations, or procedural filings.
Because the term has no modern descendant in name — its function having been absorbed entirely into the subpoena duces tecum and, in discovery practice, into document requests and deposition notices — direct searches for "preme" in modern legal databases will return little of value. Cross-searching under subpoena duces tecum, document production, and relevant federal statutory history will yield the surrounding doctrinal context.
The Anderson's entry is fragmentary, suggesting this was already a term on the margins of legal vocabulary even at the time of that dictionary's compilation. Researchers should treat it as a procedural term of limited circulation rather than a widely standardized concept.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law provides the only identified historical dictionary definition. The entry is brief and incomplete as preserved: it identifies the preme as a clause of requisition, particularly designating the document, added to an ordinary subpoena, and connects it to examination of witnesses under Rev. St. § 863. The entry's truncated condition limits what can be reconstructed from it alone.
No corroborating definition appears in other standard historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus. The absence of this term from Bouvier, Black's early editions, and similar reference works suggests it was either a term of limited geographic or professional circulation, or one that was subsumed so quickly into the broader subpoena duces tecum framework that it did not achieve independent dictionary treatment elsewhere. Anderson's entry stands as the primary — and possibly sole — formal dictionary record of this term.
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Jurisdictional Note
The available historical record ties this term to federal practice. Whether it had independent currency in state court practice is unclear from existing sources. Researchers working in state court archives should not assume the term carried the same meaning or was in common use outside the federal context.
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