Nisi Prius - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition nisi-prius

Definition :

Nisi prius, a Common Law phrase, which originated thus:

An action was formerly triable only in the Court where it was brought. But it was provided by Magna Charta, in ease of the subject, that assizes of novel disseisin and mort-ancestor (which were the most common remedies of that day) should thenceforward instead of being tried at Westminster, in the superior Court, be taken in their proper counties, and for this purpose justices were to be sent into every county once a year to take these assizes there, 1 Reeves, 246. These local trials being convenient, were applied to other actions: for by the statute of Nisi Prius, 13 Edw. 1, st. 1, t. 30, as the general course of proceedings, writs of venire for summoning juries to the superior courts are in the following terms:-P'cipius tibi quod venire facias coram Justiciariis nostris apud Westm. In Octavis Sancti Michaelis Nisi talis et talis, tali die et loco, ad partes illas venerint duodecim, etc. Thus the trial was to be had at Westminster only in the event of its not previously taking place in the county before the justices appointed to take the assizes this clause of nisi or nisi prius is not now retained in the venire, but it occurs in the record and the judgment roll. And it is enforced by a subsequent statute of 14 Edw. 3, c. 16, which authorizes a trial before the justices of assize, in lieu of the superior Court, and gives it the name of a trial at Nisi Prius, 2 Inst. 424.