ASSIZE. This word, literally signifying a "sitting" or "session," is a term used in the principal European legal systems, and very much in the same sense, or rather senses, in all, for it has more than one distinctive meaning. As is common with regard to most of our ancient legal technicality, the Latin language, in the first instance (assideo), and then the French (assis), appear to have led to its introduction into the phraseology of the law of England, and, it may be added, also of Scotland, although in the latter country it has a more limited application in judicial procedure than in England, A. being in Scot land the old technical expression for a jury. In England, this word may also signify a jury, and it is sometimes used to denote an ordinance, decree, or law. But in modern practice, it is commonly applied to the sessions or sittings of the judges of the superior law-courts, held periodically in each county, for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice. These courts came into use in room of ancient justices in eyre, justicia rei in itinere. They are now appointed by commissions issued twice a year to the judges of the high court of justice, two judges being generally assigned to each circuit. (These are the general commissions; special commissions are occasionally granted to certain judges to try certain causes and crimes.) By accompanying writs of asRociatam, certain persons are directed to be associated with the justices and sergeants, in order to take the assizes, etc., that a sufficient supply of commissioners may never be wanting. But, to prevent the delay of justice by the absence of any of them, there is also issued, of course, a writ of si non manes, directing that, if all cannot be present, any two of them (a justice or sergeant being one) may proceed to execute the commission. These commissioners or judges of A. are sent twice in every year on circuits all round the kingdom, to try by a jury of the respective counties the truth of such matters of fact as are then tinder dispute in the courts of Westminster hall; and occasionally a third circuit is appointed in the course of the year, for the purpose delivery. The cir cuits are eight in munber—such as dm home, the midland, the Norfolk, the Oxford, the northern, the western, the north Wales, and the south Wales circuit; and in going them, the judges or commissioners sit by virtue of four several authorities: 1. The commission of the peace; 2. A. commission of over and terminer; 3. A commission of general jail delivery. The other authority is, 4. That of nisi prius, which is a consequence of the ancient commission of A. being annexed to the offide of justices of A. by the statute of Westminster the second (13 Edw. I. c. 30); and it empowers them to try all questions of fact issuing out of the courts at Westminster that are then ripe for trial by jury. These, by the ancient course of the courts, were usually appointed to be tried at Westminster in some Easter or Michaelmas term, by a jury returned from the county wherein the cause of action arose; but with this proviso, nisi prius, unless before the day prefixed the judges of A. should come into the county in question, which in modern times they
have invariably done in the vacations preceding; so that the trial has always, in fact, taken place before those judges. And now, by the effect of the statute 15 and 16 Viet. c. 76 (the common law procedure act, 1852), the course of proceeding is no longer even ostensibly connected with a proviso at nisi prius, but the trial is allowed to take place without the use of any such words in the 'process of the court, and as a matter of course, before the judges sent under commission into the several counties. The circuit system, however, does not extend to London and Middlesex, which have instead courts of nisi prius, which are held before the chief or other judge of the superior courts for the trial of civil causes, at what are called the London and Westminster sittings; and the estab lishment of the central criminal court (by the 4 and 5 Will. IV. c. 36, the jurisdiction of which was extended by the 19 and 20 c. 16) has sufficiently provided for the admin istration of criminal justice within these districts. The judicature act (1873, ss. 11, 16, 29, 87, 77, 93, and 99) made no important alteration in the manner of holding assize.
The circuit courts of justiciary in Scotland, of which there are three—the north, the west, and the south—very much resemble the assizes in England, and have, in criminal matters at least, very much the same jurisdiction; but in civil causes their authority is very limited.
In the sense of an ordinance or law, the term A. has various applications, although chiefly in the more ancient systems of jurisprudence. Thus, the " assizes" of Jerusalem were, as we are told in Gibbon's Decline and Fall (vol. xi., p. 93), a code of feudal laws for the kingdom of Jerusalem, formed in 1099 by an assembly of the Latin barons and of the clergy and laity under Godfrey of Bouillon. Then there were the " assizes" or ordi nances regulating the price of bread, ale, fuel, and other common necessaries of life, but all of which have been abolished. The same regulations appear to have prevailed in Scotland in ancient times. See JURY TRIAL, FAIRS.
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