Definition
A reclaiming bill (also called a reclaiming petition) is a procedural device in Scots law by which a party seeks review of an interlocutor — an interim or procedural judgment — issued by a Lord Ordinary or other inferior court, such as a sheriff's court. The petition recites the interlocutor verbatim, sets out written argument, and concludes with a prayer asking that the interlocutor be recalled or altered, in whole or in part. It functions as the Scots law equivalent of an appeal or motion for review of an intermediate ruling, distinct from a final appeal on the merits.
---
Common Confusion
The term "bill" here does not refer to a legislative bill or a bill in equity as used in English and American practice. In older Scots procedure, "bill" carried the sense of a formal written petition or complaint — closer to the English "bill in chancery" than to a statute or draft law. Researchers accustomed to English or American usage should not import those meanings here. Similarly, a reclaiming bill should not be confused with a final appeal (recourse) in Scots procedure; it operates at the interlocutory stage.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow term of Scots procedural law with no direct analogue in English common law or American practice. Researchers will encounter it primarily in historical Scots legal materials, treatises on Scottish court procedure, and comparative law sources dealing with the Court of Session.
Several traps exist for the researcher working with historical sources. First, the term appears almost exclusively in Scots law contexts; its presence in an English or American source likely signals either direct quotation from a Scots authority or an error in source attribution. Second, the abbreviated entries in Black's (both editions) offer essentially no substantive guidance — the first edition entry cuts off entirely, and the second provides only a single sentence. Bouvier's is the most useful of the dictionary sources, preserving the procedural mechanics: verbatim recitation of the interlocutor, written argument, and a prayer for recall or alteration. Third, the Burrill's entry reproduced here appears to be a printing or compilation error — its text concerns jury process and disseisin, not the reclaiming bill at all, suggesting either a page-break misattribution or a typesetting fault in the original volume. Researchers relying on Burrill for this term will find nothing useful.
For corpus navigation: the reclaiming bill belongs to a cluster of Scots procedural terms — interlocutor, petition, bill of advocation, suspension — that require familiarity with the structure of the Court of Session and sheriff court practice to interpret correctly. Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland (cited in Bouvier) and Shaw's Digest are the primary period authorities.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
The dictionary sources agree on the essential character of the reclaiming bill as a Scots law petition for review of an interlocutory judgment. Bouvier's is the controlling source among the four, offering the fullest description of the form: verbatim recitation of the interlocutor, written argument, and a closing prayer for recall or alteration. The citation to Bell's Dictionary and Shaw's Digest grounds the definition in recognized Scots authorities.
Black's second edition adds only that the petition operates against judgments of "the lord ordinary or other inferior court," which usefully confirms the device is not limited to the Court of Session's Lord Ordinary but extends to sheriff courts and comparable tribunals.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any discussion of how the reclaiming bill fits within the broader architecture of Scots appellate procedure, its relationship to bills of suspension and advocation, or the procedural reforms that gradually standardized and eventually renamed such petitions. Researchers needing that context must go beyond the dictionary sources to Bell or to modern commentaries on Scots civil procedure.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The reclaiming bill is specific to Scots law and has no operative equivalent in English common law jurisdictions or American practice. In modern Scots procedure, the terminology has evolved — "reclaiming motion" is the current usage before the Inner House of the Court of Session — but the historical term appears throughout older Scots case reports and treatises.
---