Definition
A Latin adverb meaning severally, in order, or one by one. In legal usage, seriatim describes a mode of proceeding — most commonly judicial deliberation — in which each member of a court delivers a separate, individual opinion rather than the court speaking through a single collective or majority opinion. It also applies to any procedural context where items, arguments, questions, or parties are addressed successively and individually rather than collectively.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One after another, in order; taking one topic or subject at a time in an order; sequentially.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): In regular order; one after the other; severally.
The common and legal meanings are close, but the legal use of seriatim carries institutional weight the ordinary meaning does not. In legal contexts, seriatim is not merely a description of sequence — it identifies a distinct mode of judicial decision-making with structural and doctrinal consequences. Knowing that a court proceeded seriatim tells a researcher not just that opinions came one after another, but that there may be no single binding opinion and that the holding must be reconstructed from multiple individual writings.
Why It Matters in Research
The term carries real practical weight in judicial history. Before the Marshall Court consolidated the practice of issuing a single "opinion of the Court," the seriatim method was the standard approach in English appellate courts and in the early U.S. Supreme Court. Researchers working with early American or English appellate reports will encounter seriatim opinions frequently: each justice writes separately, and there is no single controlling majority opinion in the modern sense. This creates interpretive challenges — determining the holding of such a case requires synthesizing multiple individual opinions, none of which necessarily commands a majority.
The shift away from seriatim practice in the United States is historically significant. Chief Justice John Marshall's deliberate move toward consolidated Court opinions in the early nineteenth century was an institutional choice with constitutional consequences, centralizing judicial authority and strengthening the Court's voice as a unified institution. Researchers analyzing early Supreme Court decisions, or tracing how legal doctrine emerged from cases decided seriatim, need to be alert to this structural difference.
In English law, seriatim delivery persisted much longer in the House of Lords and the Privy Council. When working with English cases through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, researchers should expect seriatim opinions as the norm, not the exception. Rapalje & Lawrence's reference to the Judicature Act of 1873 signals that procedural reforms were actively reshaping English court practice during this period, making the corpus context around that era particularly important.
Beyond judicial opinions, the term appears in procedural contexts — interrogatories to be answered seriatim, pleadings addressing claims seriatim, or arguments structured to meet objections one by one. These uses are less prominent in modern American practice but appear regularly in older English pleading records and chancery proceedings.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are consistent and compact on this term. All five sources agree on the core Latin meaning — severally, in order, one by one — without substantive divergence. Black's (both editions) and Anderson's offer the cleanest definitions. Anderson's is the most practically useful of the historical entries, giving explicit examples ("the judges delivered opinions seriatim; questions to be answered seriatim") that illustrate both judicial and procedural applications.
Rapalje & Lawrence provides the most contextually rich entry, tying the term directly to English court practice and the Judicature Act of 1873 — the only historical source here that grounds the term in a specific legislative moment. Burrill traces the word to the Latin series, meaning order, and notes its use in reports to denote sequential treatment, which is accurate and helpful for researchers encountering the term in older reporters.
What the historical dictionaries understate is the institutional significance of the seriatim versus consolidated-opinion debate in American constitutional development. They treat the term descriptively and procedurally but do not flag the Marshall Court transformation. That context must come from secondary sources and court history rather than from the dictionary shelf.