Definition
A special allocatur is a formal judicial grant of permission authorizing the issuance of a particular writ in cases where that permission is required by rule or statute before the writ may issue as of right. The term is most closely associated with writs of error, where certain categories of cases — particularly those involving questions that courts or legislatures deemed not automatically reviewable — required a judge or court to affirmatively certify that the writ should be allowed before the appellate process could proceed.
The allocatur (from the Latin "it is allowed") was the endorsement itself; the "special" qualifier signals that this permission was not routine or automatic but was instead a distinct procedural step triggered by the nature of the case or the court from which review was sought.
Common Confusion
Special allocatur is sometimes conflated with certiorari, and the practical overlap is real: both are mechanisms by which a higher court exercises discretion over whether to hear a matter. The distinction is historical and procedural rather than functional. Allocatur was the allowance of a writ already recognized at common law (particularly the writ of error), while certiorari developed as a separate discretionary writ. As the writ of error was abolished or absorbed into modern appellate procedure in most jurisdictions, the allocatur framework largely disappeared with it. In Pennsylvania, however, the term "allocatur" survived and remains in active use as the name for the Supreme Court's discretionary grant of review — functionally equivalent to certiorari in federal practice, but with distinct procedural roots.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "special allocatur" in historical sources need to recognize that the term is doing procedural work that has no clean modern analogue in most jurisdictions. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century materials, the phrase signals that a writ of error was not available as a matter of course in that category of case — the party needed a judge to endorse the writ before review could proceed. The absence of that endorsement was a jurisdictional defect that could end the appeal entirely.
The term appears with particular frequency in English common law sources and in American materials from states that closely tracked English practice. Researchers working in Pennsylvania materials face a complication: Pennsylvania courts continued to use "allocatur" well into the modern era, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court formally retains the term for its discretionary jurisdiction. A Pennsylvania case describing a grant or denial of "allocatur" may therefore be describing something procedurally similar to the U.S. Supreme Court granting or denying certiorari — not the historical writ-of-error mechanism.
When tracing appellate history in pre-twentieth-century cases, the presence or absence of a special allocatur can explain why a case did or did not proceed to a higher court. Failure to obtain the allocatur where required was not a mere technicality but a substantive barrier to review. Researchers should not assume that a case was decided on the merits if the record reflects a denied allocatur.
Cross-referencing special allocatur with writs of error in the same corpus will generally surface the procedural context needed to interpret what the endorsement accomplished in a given case.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines special allocatur as "the special allowance of a writ (particularly a writ of error) which is required in some particular cases." The entry is minimal, and its brevity reflects the term's already-declining currency by the time Black's was compiled in its major editions. The definition accurately captures the core mechanism — a required allowance, not an automatic one — but does not elaborate on which categories of cases triggered the requirement, how the endorsement was obtained, or what standards governed the judge's decision whether to allow the writ.
What historical dictionaries generally do not address is the Pennsylvania survival of the allocatur concept, which means researchers relying solely on dictionary sources may underestimate the term's continued practical relevance in that jurisdiction's case law.
Jurisdictional Note
In most American jurisdictions and in English practice, special allocatur as a discrete procedural mechanism became obsolete with the abolition of the writ of error and the consolidation of appellate review under modern procedural rules. Pennsylvania is the notable exception: "allocatur" remains the formal term for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's discretionary grant of appeal and appears routinely in contemporary Pennsylvania case law and court rules.