Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning proceeding or mode of proceeding. Proces denotes the formal course or method by which a legal action advances — the procedural steps through which a matter moves in a court or tribunal. In medieval and early English legal usage, the term captured both the concept of a legal proceeding generally and the specific procedural form governing how such a proceeding was conducted.
The term appears most prominently in early common law and Anglo-Norman legal texts. Britton's treatise uses the phrase "de proces en assises" to describe the mode of proceeding in assize actions, illustrating the term's function as a descriptor of procedural form rather than substantive right.
Common Confusion
PROCES should not be confused with the modern English word "process," which it superficially resembles and from which it is effectively a cognate. Although both derive from related roots and share the general sense of a course of action moving forward, "process" in modern legal usage has taken on a broader and more varied set of technical meanings — including service of process, due process, and procedural process — none of which precisely map onto the narrower historical sense of proces as a mode of proceeding within a specific court action. Researchers encountering proces in older sources should resist reading modern procedural law concepts backward into the term.
Why It Matters in Research
Proces is a term of historical significance only. It will not appear in modern American or English statutes, rules of civil procedure, or contemporary case law. Researchers are most likely to encounter it when working with:
Anglo-Norman and Law French primary sources, particularly early treatises such as Britton and Bracton-era materials, where procedural terminology was drawn from French legal vocabulary rather than Latin or English.
Secondary sources and law dictionaries from the nineteenth century that preserved Law French terms as part of the bridge between historical and modern procedural concepts. Burrill's inclusion of the term reflects the nineteenth-century dictionary tradition of cataloguing the Law French lexicon for practitioners who still needed to parse older authorities.
The Rapalje & Lawrence citation is fragmentary, appearing in the context of necessaries, wages, and actions — suggesting that even by the late nineteenth century, proces had receded to a cross-reference role rather than standing as an operative legal term.
The principal research trap here is terminological drift. A researcher reading a historical text that references the "proces" in an assize action should understand it as describing procedural method — not as a reference to process in the service-of-process sense, not as a due process concept, and not as a synonym for lawsuit or cause of action in the modern sense. The term belongs to the procedural vocabulary of the assize system specifically, and importing it into any other context risks anachronism.
Because the term is effectively obsolete, it functions in the Law Mind corpus primarily as a gateway to understanding how medieval and early modern courts organized their procedural frameworks. Researchers following this thread will find more developed discussions under process, proceeding, and assize.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most useful entry: a clean etymological note tracing proces to the French proceder (to proceed) and a precise gloss — "proceeding; mode of proceeding" — anchored by the Britton citation. This is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of Law French terms: brief, sourced, and functional.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is too fragmentary in the available text to add independent doctrinal weight. The cross-references to necessaries, wages, and the action headings suggest the fuller entry may have addressed a specific procedural context — possibly the mode of proceeding available in actions for wages or necessaries — but the surviving excerpt does not permit confident reconstruction.
Neither dictionary attempts to reconcile proces with its modern English descendant "process," which by the time both dictionaries were published had already displaced the Law French term entirely. This is a consistent gap in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries treating Law French vocabulary: they preserve the term without squarely addressing the conceptual distance between the historical term and its modern near-homonym.
Jurisdictional Note
Proces as a distinct legal term has no operative meaning in any modern American jurisdiction. Its relevance is confined to historical English law, particularly the Anglo-Norman procedural tradition. Researchers working in civil law jurisdictions should note that French legal usage of "procès" (meaning lawsuit or trial) evolved on a separate track and carries different doctrinal weight in that tradition.