Definition
In old English law, neglect or default. The term appears in pleading contexts, where a party is said to be able to "defend the summons and the sursisa" — that is, to deny both that a lawful summons was served and that any default occurred. The term functioned as a procedural label for a party's failure to appear or respond as required, distinguishable from a substantive wrong.
Why It Matters in Research
Sursisa is a term of obsolete English legal procedure encountered almost exclusively in medieval Latin legal texts and their early modern commentators. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in transcriptions or analyses of Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, where it appears in discussions of pleading and default. The term will not appear in modern procedural law under this name; its functional equivalent in contemporary practice is procedural default or failure to appear.
Because sursisa is a Latinized form derived from the Law French sursise, researchers working in medieval English legal records may encounter both forms depending on whether the source is in Latin or Law French. The two forms refer to the same concept, and researchers should cross-reference both spellings when conducting corpus searches. Sources that index only the Latin form will miss occurrences in French-language records, and vice versa.
The term belongs to a cluster of archaic procedural vocabulary — alongside essoign, default, and amercement — that structured how courts responded to a party's absence or failure to act. Understanding sursisa in context requires familiarity with how medieval English courts distinguished types of procedural failure, since the consequences (and available defenses) differed depending on the classification of the default.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal secondary source that identifies and defines this term for English-language legal researchers. Burrill traces sursisa to Law French sursise and defines it simply as "neglect; default," illustrating its use with the formulaic phrase from Bracton: Potest defendere summonitionem et sursisam — "he may defend [deny] the summons and the default." This phrase reflects the procedural reality that a defendant could contest both prongs: whether a valid summons had issued and whether any default had in fact occurred.
No modern legal dictionaries define this term, and it is absent from Black's Law Dictionary. Its presence in Burrill reflects that dictionary's strength in covering medieval Latin and Law French procedural vocabulary that later lexicographers dropped. Researchers relying solely on more recent dictionaries will find no entry and may mistakenly treat the term as unidentifiable.
Jurisdictional Note
Sursisa is specific to historical English common law procedure and has no recognized equivalent in current English, American, or Commonwealth legal practice. It does not appear in civilian or canon law traditions under this form.