Definition
An umpire or arbitrator; a neutral third party appointed to resolve a dispute between other parties. The term appears in historical English legal usage to describe the deciding figure in arbitral or umpiral proceedings — the person called upon to break a deadlock or render a final award where appointed arbitrators have failed to agree.
Why It Matters in Research
SEMEND is a term of considerable antiquity with negligible presence in modern legal literature. Researchers encountering it will almost exclusively do so in older English legal materials — medieval and early modern sources, Year Books, or institutional texts referencing ancient practice. It is not a term in active use in any common law jurisdiction today. Its functional equivalent in modern sources is "umpire" in the arbitration context, a figure distinct from an arbitrator proper: the umpire steps in when arbitrators are deadlocked, whereas arbitrators are the primary decision-makers.
The practical research trap here is terminological displacement. A researcher working through historical arbitration materials may encounter SEMEND and fail to connect it to the umpire-arbitrator framework that organizes the same concept in later and modern sources. Tracing arbitration doctrine from historical English materials into 19th-century American law requires recognizing that SEMEND, "umpire," and "arbitrator" are not always used with precision or consistency across sources of different periods.
Bouvier's attribution to "Anc. Inst. Eng." (Ancient Institutes of England) places this firmly in the antiquarian layer of English legal history. Researchers should not expect to find SEMEND operative in case law or statutes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines SEMEND simply as "an umpire, arbitrator," with attribution to the Ancient Institutes of England. The entry is minimal — Bouvier does not elaborate on the term's usage, scope, or procedural context. This brevity likely reflects the term's status even in Bouvier's time as a historical curiosity rather than a live term of art.
No other major historical legal dictionaries appear to have carried this term in any developed form. Its absence from later standard references (Black's, Stroud's, Wharton's) underscores its obsolescence. Researchers should treat Bouvier's entry as a waypoint to primary antiquarian sources rather than as a substantive doctrinal statement.
Note: The Bouvier entry for SEMEND appears adjacent to an entry for SÆVITIA (cruelty in ecclesiastical divorce proceedings), reflecting only the alphabetical accident of proximity — the two terms have no substantive connection.