Definition
A writ or court order directing the sheriff to select additional jurors from bystanders present in the courtroom when the original jury panel is insufficient to complete a jury. The phrase is Latin for "such of the bystanders" or "so many of the bystanders," referring to the practice of drawing on persons who happened to be present in court rather than summoning new jurors from the community at large. The persons so selected were called "talesmen" and the process itself was commonly referred to simply as a "tales."
When a jury panel was exhausted — whether through challenges, disqualifications, or simple shortage of summoned veniremen — rather than delay proceedings to summon an entirely new panel, the court could invoke this remedy and fill the remaining seats from those standing in or near the courtroom. The sheriff or other court officer would then select from among the bystanders the number needed to complete the jury.
Note on spelling: The term appears in historical sources variously as "tales de circumstantibus," "tales circumstantibus," and abbreviated simply as "tales." The variant "tales ds circumstantibus" reflects archaic scribal abbreviation. Modern references standardize to "tales de circumstantibus."
Common Confusion
"Tales de circumstantibus" is frequently shortened in historical records and court documents to "tales" alone, which creates ambiguity because "tales" in this context is a Latin plural noun (from "talis," meaning "such" or "of such kind") entirely unrelated to the English word "tales" meaning stories or narratives. Researchers encountering references to awarding a "tales" in trial records should read this as the jury-completion mechanism, not as a reference to narrative testimony. The shortened form "tales" persists in some statutes and procedural rules well into the modern era.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical court records, procedural treatises, and older statutory materials. Researchers working in English common law sources from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries will encounter it in trial narratives, writs, and session records whenever a jury panel ran short. Because the process was so routine, many historical clerks recorded it in abbreviated form — "tales awarded," "tales de circ.," or simply "tales granted" — without further explanation, which can obscure what procedural event occurred.
American jurisdictions largely codified and then modernized this practice. Researchers tracing the evolution of jury selection procedure should look for tales statutes in early American compilations, where the term often survived verbatim from English practice before being replaced by updated venire and panel procedures. The presence or absence of a tales procedure in a given jurisdiction's records can indicate something about the formality and resources of a particular court.
The term is rarely encountered in sources after the mid-twentieth century. If it appears in a modern context, it is almost certainly a direct quotation from or reference to older authority.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines the term economically: "So many of the by-standers. The emphatic words of the old writ awarded to the sheriff to make up a deficiency of jurors out of the persons present in court." Black's cross-references Blackstone's Commentaries at volume 3, page 365, which remains the most accessible primary exposition of the practice in the common law tradition. Blackstone situates the writ within the broader mechanics of jury assembly, explaining that tales could be awarded either on motion of a party or by the court's own motion when the panel proved insufficient.
Historical dictionaries uniformly treat this as a term of art belonging to the mechanics of jury procedure rather than to substantive law. None of the standard historical sources flag jurisdictional variation in the core meaning, though they acknowledge that American statutory modifications altered how and when the remedy was available. What historical sources generally omit is any discussion of the social and evidentiary complications the practice could create — selecting jurors from courtroom bystanders who may have witnessed testimony, heard arguments, or had prior knowledge of the case raised concerns that eventually contributed to the displacement of the practice by more structured panel procedures.
Jurisdictional Note
The practice was received into American law from English common law and was codified in many early state statutes. The extent to which tales de circumstantibus survived as a live procedural option varied by state; some jurisdictions abolished bystander selection early and required a fresh venire in all cases of panel insufficiency. Federal practice moved away from the bystander mechanism as formal jury management procedures developed.