Definition
An abbreviated procedural term formed from the first syllables of the Latin phrase *recordari facias loquelam*. REFALO was used in English practice as a shorthand notation directing that a plaint or cause be removed from an inferior court — typically a county court — into a superior court by means of a writ of *recordari facias loquelam*. The writ itself commanded the inferior court to send up the record of the plea so that proceedings could continue in the higher court. REFALO appears primarily in pleading records and practice manuals as a contracted reference to this removal mechanism rather than as a substantive legal term in its own right.
Common Confusion
The entry for REFALO in Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) appears to contain a printing or compilation error: the text that follows the initial definition shifts into material describing Scottish reduction and reduction improbation, which are entirely unrelated doctrines. Researchers encountering that edition should treat the REFALO entry as ending after the citation to 2 Sell. Pr. 160 and disregard the appended Scottish law material, which was almost certainly misbound or misattributed in typesetting.
Why It Matters in Research
REFALO is a notational artifact of English common law procedure rather than a doctrine with independent legal content. Its significance to corpus researchers is almost entirely navigational:
First, the term will appear in older pleading records, writs registers, and practice manuals as an abbreviation — not spelled out. Researchers working with manuscript court records or early printed reports from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries may encounter "refalo" without any gloss and need to recognize it as a reference to the *recordari facias loquelam* removal mechanism.
Second, the writ to which REFALO refers — *recordari facias loquelam* — was itself a procedural device of limited and declining use. By the mid-nineteenth century, procedural reforms in England progressively replaced or formalized removal mechanisms, making REFALO references increasingly archaic. Finding the term in a source therefore helps date that source's practice context.
Third, the confusion introduced by the Black's 2nd Ed. entry is a genuine research trap. A researcher following that entry into Scottish reduction doctrine would be pursuing an entirely different body of law. The Scottish material (reduction improbation, voluntary deeds, the sixty-day rule, kirk-or-market survivorship) belongs under entirely separate headings and has no connection to REFALO or to *recordari facias loquelam*.
Fourth, the citation shared by both Black's and Bouvier's — 2 Sell. Pr. 160 — refers to Sellon's *Practice of the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas*, a well-known English practice manual. Researchers seeking the procedural context of REFALO should go to that source rather than relying on the compressed dictionary definitions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st Ed.) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: REFALO is a syllabic contraction of *recordari facias loquelam*, and both cite 2 Sell. Pr. 160 as authority. Neither source expands beyond this basic identification, which is appropriate — the term has no substantive legal content independent of the writ it abbreviates.
Black's 2nd Ed. reproduces the same core definition but is followed by what appears to be extraneous text from a Scottish law entry. This is almost certainly a typographical or binding error in that edition rather than an intentional editorial expansion. No historical dictionary treats REFALO as having any connection to Scottish law.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide — and what researchers should seek elsewhere — is any procedural history of the *recordari facias loquelam* writ itself: its origins in the common law removal practice, its relationship to certiorari and other removal writs, and the point at which it fell into disuse. Sellon's Practice and the older writs registers are the appropriate sources for that inquiry.