Definition
A sitting or session of a court or other formal body, particularly in Scots law. The term appears most frequently in two specific contexts:
1. A sitting of the Court of Session or another Scottish court or tribunal.
2. Acts of Sederunt: ordinances and procedural rules enacted by the Court of Session in the exercise of its delegated legislative authority to regulate court procedure, govern process, and expedite the administration of justice. Acts of Sederunt are the primary mechanism by which the Court of Session has historically regulated Scottish civil procedure and remain a living source of Scots procedural law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A formal meeting, especially of a judicial or ecclesiastical body; also, those persons present at such a meeting.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A sitting, as of a court or other body. Webster's also notes the specific legal application: "Acts of sederunt (Scots Law), ordinances of the Court of Session for the ordering of processes and expediting of justice."
The common and legal meanings are unusually close here, but the legal term carries a weight the general usage does not convey. In ordinary usage, "sederunt" can describe any formal assembly, including church courts and ecclesiastical bodies. In strict legal usage, the term anchors to the Court of Session specifically, and its most consequential application — Acts of Sederunt — designates formal quasi-legislative instruments with binding procedural force, not merely a record of attendance or a description of a meeting.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Acts of Sederunt: The principal legal form of the term in practice. These are subordinate legislative instruments issued by the Court of Session under statutory authority, principally to regulate the rules of procedure in the Scottish civil courts. They are distinct from Acts of Adjournal, which perform an analogous function for the High Court of Justiciary in criminal proceedings. Acts of Sederunt have been issued since at least the sixteenth century and continue to be made under modern enabling legislation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "sederunt" in pre-twentieth-century Scottish legal materials should be alert to context. The bare term — describing a sitting of a court — appears in narrative accounts, minute books, and judicial records and carries no special procedural significance beyond identifying that the court was in session. The compound form, Acts of Sederunt, is categorically different: it refers to instruments with the force of law and demands treatment as a primary source of procedural authority, not merely descriptive background.
Historical collections of Acts of Sederunt are an important but underused source for understanding Scottish civil procedure in any given period. Researchers working on Scots law topics should treat Acts of Sederunt as the equivalent of procedural rules or court orders made under statutory authority — they governed everything from the form of pleadings to the conduct of diligence (enforcement) proceedings.
The distinction between Acts of Sederunt (Court of Session, civil) and Acts of Adjournal (High Court of Justiciary, criminal) is a consistent trap. Materials touching on Scottish criminal procedure reference the latter; confusing the two produces research errors.
Because the term is Latin-derived and largely confined to Scots law, it appears rarely in English legal dictionaries and is essentially absent from American legal sources. Researchers should not expect American legal encyclopedias or general common law dictionaries to address it.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential entry: "L. Lat. (They sat.) In Scotch law. The session or sitting of a court. See Acts of sederunt." Burrill correctly identifies the literal Latin meaning — the third person plural perfect of sedere, "to sit" — and cross-references the more significant legal compound, though without elaborating on the legislative character of Acts of Sederunt.
Rapalje & Lawrence contains no substantive entry for "sederunt." The source material for this entry reflects only a neighboring entry (Sedge Flat), confirming the term's absence from that dictionary. This is unsurprising: Rapalje & Lawrence is oriented toward American common law practice, and sederunt has no meaningful American legal footprint.
Webster's 1913 is unusually informative here, citing Bell on the definition of Acts of Sederunt and quoting Professor Wilson — a reminder that the term circulated in educated general English usage as well as strictly legal contexts, particularly in Scottish literary and academic writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
None of the historical dictionaries surveyed captures the full procedural significance of Acts of Sederunt as quasi-legislative instruments. Researchers requiring substantive analysis of their content and authority should consult dedicated Scottish legal sources rather than relying on general law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Sederunt and Acts of Sederunt are terms of Scots law with no direct equivalent in English, Welsh, or Northern Irish legal systems and no application in American law. Researchers working on any jurisdiction outside Scotland will encounter the term only in comparative or historical discussions of Scottish legal institutions.