Legal Term Dictionary

Search our free database of thousands of legal terms. The easiest-to-read, most user-friendly guide to legal terms.This dictionary is from the early 20th century and is not to be construed as legal advice.

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  • CIPPI
    An old English law term for the stocks, an instrument in which the wrists or ankles of petty offenders were confined.
  • CIRCADA
    A tribute anciently paid to the bishop or archbishop for visiting churches. Du Fresne.
  • CIRCAR
    In Hindu law. Head of affairs ; the state or government; a grand division of a province; a headman. A name used by Europeans in Bengal to denote the Hindu writer and accountant employed by themselves, or in the public offices. Wharton.
  • CIRCUIT
    A division of the country, appointed for a particular judge to visit for the trial of causes or for the administration of justice. Bouvier. Circuits, as the term is used in England, may be otherwise defined to be the periodical progresses of the judges of the superior courts of common More...
  • CIRCUIT COURTS
    The name of a system of courts of the United States, invested with general original jurisdiction of such matters and causes as are of Federal cognizance, except the matters specially delegated to the district courts. The United States circuit courts are held by one of the justices of the supreme More...
  • CIRCUIT COURTS OF APPEALS
    A system of courts of the United States (one in each circuit) created by act of congress of March 8, 1891 (U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 488), composed of the circuit justice, the circuit judge, and an additional circuit Judge appointed for each such court, and having appellate jurisdiction More...
  • CIRCUITY OF ACTION
    This occurs where a litigant, by a complex, indirect, or roundabout course of legal proceeding, makes two or more actions necessary, in order to effect that adjustment of rights between all the parties concerned in the transaction which, by a more direct course, might have been accomplished in a single More...
  • CIRCULAR NOTES
    Similar instruments to "letters of credit." They are drawn by resident bankers upon their foreign correspondents, in favor of persons traveling abroad. The correspondents must be satisfied of the identity of the applicant, before payment; and the requisite proof of such identity is usually furnished, upon the applicant's producing a More...
  • CIRCULATION
    As used in statutes providing for taxes on the circulation of hanks, this term includes all currency or circulating notes or bills, or certificates or bills intended to circulate as money. U. S. v. White (C. C.) 19 Fed. 723; IT. S. v. Wilson, 106 U. S. 620, 2 Sup. More...
  • CIRCUMDUCTION
    In Scotch law. A closing of the period for lodging papers, or doing any other act required in a cause. Paters. Comp. —Circumduction of the term. In Scotch practice. The sentence of a judge, declaring the time elapsed within which a proof ought to have been led. and precluding the More...
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