Definition
In practice, a remover is the procedural act of transferring a suit or cause from one court into another. The term refers to the transfer itself — the mechanism of moving litigation out of the court where it originated and into a different forum — rather than to a party or person. The transfer is accomplished by procedural instruments such as a writ of error, certiorari, or analogous process.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An agent noun meaning one who, or that which, removes; also an agitator.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "One who removes; as, a remover of landmarks."
In ordinary English, remover denotes a person or thing that removes something. In historical legal usage, the term is not a person at all — it names the act or process of transfer itself. A researcher encountering "remover" in a procedural context should read it as shorthand for the procedure of removal, not as a reference to any party to the action.
Common Confusion
Remover (the procedural act) should not be confused with removal (the modern statutory concept). Contemporary federal practice uses "removal" as the operative term for transferring a case from state to federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1441 et seq., and "removal proceedings" in immigration law for deportation proceedings. The older term remover, as used in Coke and the historical dictionaries, describes the same genus of court-to-court transfer but in the context of common law process — writs of error, certiorari, and certiorari-like instruments — that no longer operate as primary removal mechanisms. Researchers should also distinguish remover from the party who initiates removal (the removing party or removing defendant), a confusion that the plain English meaning of the word actively invites.
Why It Matters in Research
Remover is an archaic procedural term unlikely to appear in modern case law or statutes, but it surfaces with some frequency in early English reports, equity treatises, and pre-twentieth-century American practice guides. The reference to 11 Coke 41 anchors the term firmly in common law procedure; researchers working in colonial or early American courts will find this lineage directly relevant.
The key navigational trap is terminological drift. Modern research on court-to-court transfer is conducted under the vocabulary of removal, not remover — but historical sources reverse that emphasis. A corpus search for "removal" will not reliably surface older discussions that use "remover" as the noun of art, and vice versa. If researching the historical roots of removal doctrine, searching both terms is necessary.
The instrument-based framing in the historical definitions also matters. Remover in the historical sources is tied to specific writs — error and certiorari — not to a general statutory power. The shift from writ-based to statute-based removal represents a significant doctrinal evolution that the historical dictionary entries do not capture, since they predate the consolidation of federal removal practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's — are in near-perfect agreement, tracking the same language and citing the same authority: 11 Coke 41. This uniformity signals that the definition was well-settled in the common law tradition and that no meaningful dispute existed about the term's meaning at the time these dictionaries were compiled.
What the historical sources do not address is significant: none of them situates remover within the evolving American statutory framework for removal to federal court, nor do they address immigration removal proceedings, which were not yet the major field of practice they would become. The historical definitions are useful precisely for their narrow scope — they describe a technical procedural term in the writ-based common law world — but they provide no guidance on how the concept translated into modern statutory removal practice.
The first edition of Black's appears to have reproduced the definition from Bouvier's or from a shared source, given the identical language. The second edition of Black's matches word for word. Researchers should not treat this convergence as independent corroboration; the three dictionaries are likely drawing from the same root, with Coke as the ultimate authority.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For modern removal practice in federal civil litigation, including the one-year limit and snap removal doctrine: Removal — The One-Year Limit, Bad Faith Exception, and Snap Removal (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia, civpro_8).
For immigration removal proceedings: Removal Proceedings — Procedure, Burden of Proof, and Relief from Removal (The Law Mind Administrative Law & Government Encyclopedia, admin_123).