Definition
To sum up is to address a tribunal — most commonly a jury, but also a referee, arbitrator, or master — at the close of a case, reviewing the evidence presented and applying the relevant law to that evidence. The act of summing up, or the summing up, refers to three related but distinct events in trial procedure: (1) the closing argument of counsel, in which each party's attorney reviews the evidence and urges a favorable conclusion; (2) the portion of a judge's charge to the jury in which the judge recapitulates the testimony and instructs on how the law applies to it; and (3) the stage of the proceedings at which these duties are performed.
The term also carries the broader sense of bringing together under one view — consolidating disparate evidence, arguments, or conclusions into a coherent whole for the decision-maker's consideration.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To produce a total by adding; to summarize.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To collect into a small compass; to comprise in a few words; to present the substance of in a condensed form.
The gap between common and legal usage is moderate but worth noting. In ordinary English, "sum up" is a casual synonym for "summarize," applicable to any context. In legal usage, the term carries procedural weight: it refers to a formal, defined stage of trial and to the specific duties of counsel and judge at that stage. A researcher who encounters "summing up" in a legal source should not read it as mere informal summary but as a reference to closing advocacy or judicial charge — acts with distinct procedural rules, timing constraints, and consequences.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term appears frequently in older English and American legal sources, particularly those describing jury trial procedure. Researchers should be aware of several navigational points.
First, usage varies between English and American practice. In English legal tradition, "summing up" most often refers to the judge's address to the jury — the judicial recapitulation of evidence before the jury retires — and is a term of art with constitutional and procedural significance in that system. In American sources, the term is applied more broadly and may refer equally to counsel's closing argument or to the judge's charge. Context determines which is meant, and the two are not interchangeable in practice or in procedural challenge.
Second, the term appears in older treatises and reports in ways that modern researchers may find unfamiliar. Sources predating the mid-twentieth century routinely describe counsel's closing argument as a "summing up" without qualification. Modern American practice more commonly uses "closing argument" or "closing statement," and the term "summing up" has receded from American usage while remaining standard in Commonwealth jurisdictions.
Third, in arbitration and reference proceedings, "summing up" retains currency as the label for the final address to a non-jury decision-maker. Researchers working with commercial arbitration records, older equity practice, or master-in-chancery proceedings will encounter the term in this sense.
Fourth, the term has no direct connection to "winding up" (dissolution of a business entity) or "lump-sum" (a form of payment), despite surface similarity. Encounters with "sum up" or "summing up" in procedural sources are never about financial computation.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law defines the term concisely and accurately: "To bring together under one view. To address a referee, a board of arbitrators, a master, but more often a jury, at the close of a case, reviewing the evidence and applying the law thereto." Anderson further notes the derivative "summing up" as applicable to counsel's final arguments, to the judge's review of testimony in the charge, and to the stage of proceedings at which these occur.
Anderson's treatment is consistent with contemporaneous English and American usage. The entry reflects the broad scope of the term — covering jury trials, arbitration, and reference proceedings — without privileging one application over another. This is appropriate given the range of forums in which trial-adjacent proceedings occurred in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the divergence between English and American usage that developed over the twentieth century, nor the near-disappearance of the term from standard American procedural vocabulary. A researcher relying solely on historical dictionary authority should supplement with jurisdiction-specific procedural sources to understand how the term was used in a particular court or era.
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Jurisdictional Note
"Summing up" remains a term of art in English, Australian, Canadian, and other Commonwealth jurisdictions, where it specifically describes the judge's charge to the jury and carries defined procedural obligations. In modern American practice, the term has largely been displaced by "closing argument" for counsel's address and "jury charge" or "jury instruction" for the judge's role. Historical American sources use the term more freely in both senses.
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