Definition
The vicinage (also written "vicinetum" in law Latin) refers to the neighborhood, locality, or surrounding district from which a jury is drawn or in which a crime is alleged to have been committed. The term appears most often in the context of the constitutional and common law right to trial by a jury of one's peers drawn from the community where the offense occurred.
Two related but distinct uses appear in legal sources:
1. As a geographic reference: The vicinage identifies the locality or neighborhood immediately relevant to a legal proceeding — particularly a criminal prosecution — meaning the place where the alleged act occurred and where community knowledge of the events would presumably reside.
2. As a jury-right term: The vicinage clause refers to the Sixth Amendment's guarantee that in criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to trial by an impartial jury "of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." This is the constitutional successor to the common law requirement that jurors be drawn from the neighborhood of the offense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Vicinity" — the surrounding area or region; the quality of being near in space.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Vicinage" — neighborhood; the places near or adjacent; also, the persons of a neighborhood.
The gap between ordinary and legal usage is meaningful. In common speech, "vicinity" or "vicinage" simply means nearby area. In legal usage, vicinage carries a specific procedural and constitutional weight: it defines the geographic unit that legitimizes jury composition. A jury from the "wrong" vicinage is not merely inconvenient — at common law and under the Sixth Amendment framework, it implicates the accused's right to be judged by those with community knowledge of the circumstances.
Common Confusion
THE VICINAGE and VENUE are closely related but not identical. Venue refers to the proper court or jurisdiction for a proceeding and can often be transferred or waived. The vicinage right, by contrast, was historically understood as a substantive protection — ensuring jurors were drawn from the locality of the crime, not merely that the trial occurred in the right court. Under modern federal practice, the district in which a crime is committed satisfies both venue and vicinage requirements, which has blurred the distinction. In historical sources, however, the two concepts travel separately, and conflating them in early common law materials produces misreadings.
THE VICINAGE and THE VENUE: In older English practice and in Blackstone, "venue" and "vicinage" were used near-interchangeably to describe the locality from which jurors were summoned. American constitutional law separated them more sharply after the Sixth Amendment distinguished the right to a jury of the state and district from the mere question of which court held the trial.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "vicinage" most often in three contexts: Sixth Amendment doctrine, early criminal procedure, and historical jury practice.
In constitutional research, the vicinage clause is the less-litigated half of the Sixth Amendment's jury trial provision. Most modern doctrine focuses on impartiality and jury composition; the geographic dimension (state and district) is often treated as settled. But historical research into the ratification debates, anti-Federalist critiques of the original Constitution's jury trial provisions, and early Republic criminal procedure turns heavily on vicinage. The absence of a vicinage clause in Article III was a central objection during ratification.
In historical sources, the term appears in its Latin form — vicinetum — particularly in the Year Books and in Coke. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English sources should recognize vicinetum as the operative term. Bouvier cross-references Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 158b) for the foundational usage.
Trap for researchers: In early American sources, "vicinage" sometimes appears in the context of nuisance law and property disputes — not criminal procedure — where it simply means the neighboring area affected by an alleged nuisance. Context is essential. A reference to "the vicinage" in a trespass or nuisance pleading is geographic description, not a jury-right invocation.
Corpus connection: Researchers tracing the development of the Sixth Amendment will find vicinage arguments central to the Federalist/Anti-Federalist exchange and to early state constitutional provisions, many of which guaranteed trial by a jury "of the vicinage" with more geographic specificity than the federal text ultimately provided.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treatment is characteristically compressed. The entry under "Vicinetum" gives three equivalents — neighborhood, vicinage, venue — and cites Coke on Littleton 158b. This compression, while faithful to the Latin, obscures the doctrinal separation that American law was developing between venue (court location) and vicinage (jury composition geography). Bouvier does not flag this tension, likely because the conflation was still operative in much mid-nineteenth-century practice.
What historical dictionaries miss: Neither Bouvier nor his contemporaries adequately develop the constitutional dimension of vicinage as a right rather than merely a procedural term of art. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier for this term will find the geographic meaning but not the rights discourse that surrounds it in the ratification period and early Republic. That material lives in the debates, not the dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The federal vicinage requirement derives from the Sixth Amendment and is satisfied by trial within the district where the offense was committed. State constitutional provisions vary: many state constitutions use "county" rather than "district" as the operative unit, creating a finer geographic requirement than federal law. Researchers comparing state and federal jury rights should not assume the state vicinage standard tracks the federal one.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Sixth Amendment — Jury Trial Clause; Venue and Vicinage in Criminal Procedure; Anti-Federalist Objections to Article III.