Definition
A writ commanding an inferior court, officer, or body to certify a record, proceeding, or other matter to a superior court. The writ de certificando is a species of certiorari — a formal mechanism by which a higher tribunal compels the transmission or authentication of information from a lower authority. Its Latin name translates literally as "for certifying" or "for the purpose of being certified," which accurately describes its function: it does not itself decide a controversy but rather ensures that the superior court has before it the materials necessary to exercise review or jurisdiction.
Common Confusion
WRIT DE CERTIFICANDO vs. CERTIORARI: The two terms are closely related and historically overlap. Bouvier's, citing Burrill, describes the writ de certificando as a species of certiorari, and in practice the terms were sometimes used interchangeably in older English and American proceedings. The distinction, where one exists, is largely one of emphasis: certiorari is the broader genus, encompassing writs that bring up entire records for review, while writ de certificando was used more narrowly to compel certification of a specific document, fact, or proceeding rather than to remove a cause wholesale. Modern researchers encountering either term in historical sources should not assume the vocabulary was applied with precision; the same procedural step might appear under either label depending on the court, the period, or the drafter's preference.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical artifact. Researchers will encounter it in pre-twentieth-century English common law materials, early American equity and common law pleading records, and treatises on extraordinary writs. Several research traps apply:
First, the term rarely appears as a standalone writ in American practice. Where it does appear in colonial or early republic records, it is typically embedded within broader certiorari proceedings or cited as descriptive shorthand for what the court is doing rather than as the formal name of a distinct writ.
Second, because the writ de certificando is a subspecies of certiorari, corpus searches limited to this Latin phrase will miss the substantial body of doctrine and practice that developed under the certiorari label. Researchers should run parallel searches for certiorari, writ of review, and removal of record to capture the full picture.
Third, historical legal dictionaries beyond Bouvier's offer minimal independent treatment of this writ, which itself signals that practitioners generally subsumed it under certiorari. If you encounter the term in a primary source and need context, the certiorari entry in contemporary treatises — not a dedicated writ de certificando entry — will carry the substantive analysis.
Fourth, the Latin form of the writ name reflects the broader convention of identifying writs by their operative words. Researchers working in records using this naming convention should be alert to related writs identified by similar grammatical constructions (de recordo et processu mittendo, de procedendo, etc.) that appear in the same procedural neighborhood.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the Law Mind shelf sources. The entry is brief: it identifies the writ as one "for certifying, or requiring a thing to be certified," characterizes it as a species of certiorari, and cites Burrill — a reference to Alexander M. Burrill's Law Dictionary and Glossary, a mid-nineteenth-century work that similarly treated the term as a subordinate variant within the certiorari family.
The brevity of Bouvier's treatment is itself informative. A writ of genuine independent importance would have received fuller analysis. The entry functions more as a cross-reference than a self-contained definition, which is consistent with how practitioners of the period understood the writ: a procedural tool whose substance was entirely governed by certiorari doctrine. Historical sources are silent on any distinct body of rules or case law specific to the writ de certificando as such.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: CERTIORARI — for the doctrine, constitutional dimensions, and historical development of the writ family to which the writ de certificando belongs.