Definition
A historical writ available to a juror who had been attainted — that is, found to have rendered a false verdict — allowing that juror to secure the release of his person, lands, and goods upon payment of a fine to the crown. The writ functioned as a procedural mechanism for relief following the harsh consequences of attaint, which could strip a juror of property and liberty as punishment for a verdict later deemed false or corrupt.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): RIS appears today as an initialism with several unrelated technical meanings: research information system, radiological information system, reverse image search, and rail interface/integration system.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A bough, branch, or twig. Archaic and poetic, preserved in Chaucer.
Neither the technical abbreviations nor the botanical archaism has any connection to the legal term. A researcher encountering RIS in a modern context should not assume the historical writ is intended; the legal meaning is confined almost entirely to historical sources treating the old English writ system.
Common Confusion
RIS should not be confused with RI/FS (Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study), the paired process under CERCLA and the National Contingency Plan that governs environmental cleanup assessments. The abbreviations are superficially similar and both appear in legal research contexts, but they are entirely unrelated. RI/FS is an active, frequently litigated framework of modern environmental law; RIS is an obsolete English writ with no modern application.
Why It Matters in Research
RIS is a term of exclusively historical significance. Researchers will encounter it only in sources treating the medieval and early modern English writ system — particularly those addressing jury attaint, a procedure abolished long before American courts were established and largely extinguished in English practice by the eighteenth century. Because the writ is so narrow and so rarely discussed, it appears in few legal dictionaries; Rapalje & Lawrence is one of the few American reference works to include it.
Several research traps apply. First, any search for "RIS" in a modern legal database will return results dominated by the CERCLA abbreviation RI/FS or by the technical initialisms listed above; the historical writ will not surface without targeted archival or historical research. Second, the writ's connection to jury attaint means a researcher must understand that broader doctrine first — RIS was the relief mechanism, not the proceeding itself. Third, the source cited by Rapalje & Lawrence (Registrum Omnium Brevium, commonly cited as Reg. Orig.) is a printed register of original writs, a category of English legal record with its own research conventions; access typically requires specialized rare book or manuscript collections.
For researchers working on the history of jury accountability, attaint procedure, or the evolution of writ practice in English law, RIS is a downstream term. The primary research path runs through attaint, with RIS appearing as a procedural detail once the attaint process is understood.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the sole entry among the surveyed sources. Their definition is terse but precise: the writ lay for a juror after attaint, enabling release of person, lands, and goods on payment of a fine to the king, citing the Reg. Orig. at folio 232. No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus — not Black's, not Bouvier, not Tomlin — appears to include this term, which underscores how marginal the writ had become even by the nineteenth century.
The entry reflects the standard Rapalje & Lawrence approach to obsolete writs: identification, brief functional description, and a single register citation. What it does not supply is any discussion of when the writ fell into disuse, what courts administered it, or how frequently it was actually invoked. Researchers needing more than a bare identification must consult primary sources on jury attaint directly.
Jurisdictional Note
RIS as a writ was a product of the English common law system and was never transplanted into American practice. No American jurisdiction recognizes or has recognized this writ. Its relevance is confined to English legal history.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
CERCLA Cleanup Process — RI/FS, ROD, and the NCP (Law Mind Environmental & Energy Law Encyclopedia) — not related to the historical writ RIS, but included here to assist researchers who encounter the abbreviation RIS in an environmental law context and need to locate the correct modern framework.