Definition
To recall a judgment is to revoke, vacate, or annul a judgment on the basis of a defect or error in matters of fact — as distinguished from reversing a judgment, which corrects errors of law. Recalling a judgment operates to undo the original disposition entirely, returning the parties to their prior positions rather than substituting a corrected legal conclusion. The mechanism functions as a corrective remedy for factual infirmity in the judgment itself: fraud in procurement, mistake of fact, newly discovered evidence, or the absence of jurisdiction over the parties at the time of entry are typical grounds.
The distinction between recalling and reversing carries procedural weight. A judgment recalled is treated as having been void or voidable for factual reasons; a judgment reversed is undone because the court misapplied the law. The two remedies move through different procedural channels and produce different downstream effects on enforcement, res judicata, and collateral proceedings.
---
Common Confusion
RECALL A JUDGMENT vs. REVERSE A JUDGMENT: These terms are often used interchangeably in informal legal writing, but the historical dictionaries are consistent in drawing a sharp line. Recall is the remedy for errors or defects in fact; reversal is the remedy for errors of law. The distinction matters in research because older opinions may use "recall" where modern courts would say "vacate" or "set aside," while "reversal" is reserved for appellate correction of legal error. Conflating the two can cause a researcher to misread the grounds on which relief was granted or the procedural posture of a case.
RECALL A JUDGMENT vs. VACATE A JUDGMENT: In modern practice, "vacate" has largely absorbed the function that historical sources assigned to "recall." The two are functionally equivalent in most contemporary procedural contexts, but "recall" persists in older case law and treatises with the specific factual-error connotation. Researchers encountering "recall" in historical sources should not assume it maps cleanly onto modern "vacate" without checking the stated grounds.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a structural pattern of historical evolution. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century case law, equity practice, or older treatises will encounter "recall a judgment" as a term of art with precise meaning. That precision has eroded in modern practice, where courts almost universally use "vacate" or "set aside" under procedural rules (Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) being the dominant modern framework). The risk in historical research is reading a court's use of "recall" as mere synonym for any post-judgment relief, when the original usage signaled a specific factual-defect theory.
The fact/law distinction embedded in this term connects to larger research threads. Because the grounds for recalling a judgment were factual, the remedy often had to be sought in the same court that rendered the judgment rather than on appeal — appellate courts correcting errors of law through reversal, trial courts correcting errors of fact through recall. This procedural division shapes where to look for relief and how to read procedural histories in older records.
Researchers tracing the enforcement of judgments should note that a recalled judgment — having been annulled for factual reasons — typically cannot serve as a basis for execution or as res judicata, whereas a reversed judgment raises more complicated questions about what was adjudicated on the merits. The encyclopedia entry on enforcement of judgments addresses post-judgment procedural tools relevant to this distinction.
The term also appears at the intersection of equity and common law practice. Courts of equity historically exercised power to relieve parties from common law judgments obtained by fraud or mistake — a jurisdiction that fed directly into the modern rule-based motion to vacate. Tracing "recall" through equity sources may require looking at bills of review and bills in equity to vacate, which are the historical predecessors to present-day Rule 60(b) motions.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical sources converge on a single core proposition: recalling a judgment is the remedy for factual error, and reversing a judgment is the remedy for legal error. Bouvier states this most sparsely — "to reverse a judgment on a matter of fact" — which, despite the use of "reverse," clearly intends the factual-correction sense. Both editions of Black's make the contrast explicit, and the language is nearly identical across editions, suggesting the definition was stable and uncontested through the period these dictionaries covered.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural mechanism by which recall operated — whether by motion, by a separate equitable action, or by the court's inherent power. They also do not discuss the modern displacement of this terminology by "vacate" and its associated procedural rules. Researchers should treat the historical definitions as conceptually precise but procedurally incomplete guides to how the remedy was actually pursued in practice.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The terminology is largely archaic in American federal practice, which now operates under Rule 60(b) for post-judgment relief on factual grounds. State courts vary: some older state codes and equity rules preserved the language of "recall" longer than federal practice did. Researchers working in state court records, particularly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, should be alert to jurisdiction-specific procedural traditions before assuming the term carries uniform meaning.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Enforcement of Judgments — Execution, Domestication, and Post-Judgment Discovery (The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)
---