Talk:Writ

Untitled
yeah, hi, how about a pronunciation..?! stick to what you preach, "intellectuals"! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.152.2.107 (talk) 06:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism
There's vandalism on the front page in line 1, in Thai characters I think. Also, I'm assuming that the first paragraph of user-created text is not meant to be there, but I'm not sure. Obviously vandalism has been here before, as shown in a post below from 2007 (Wow!) I also think due to a lack of clarification and lack of quality that a moderator would like to come in here. AWwikipedia &#34;Eat more nachos!&#34; (talk) 11:09, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism
Removed graffiti with a reference to n*****mania dot com CatCube —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.192.196.109 (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Court orders
I have twice reverted an attempt to make the definition of a writ point to "court order". This is because, in general, writs are not court orders as defined in the court order article. The best example -- and one referred to in the article -- is a writ of summons to Parliament, which is not an "official proclamation by a judge (or panel of judges)" in any sense. Its true that historically most writs originate from what might be described as a court, but that would be a mis-analysis in the modern sense of the word. So, many writs came from the chancery, but they were not made as proclamations of judges, they were administrative actions of clerks in chancery. Some writs that still exist (or existed until very recently in England and Wales) were of that kind. So many writs of execution could be obtained administratively from a court without intervention of a judge. Please do not revert again without discussion here. Francis Davey 08:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Dropping the Writ
Help me here, I have never heard of "dropping the writ" or the need for a "writ of election" in UK general elections. The phrase never appeared in our constitutional law lectures. Does anyone have a source for it? Francis Davey 23:42, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Parliament did not necessarily meet regularly before the English Civil War. Instead, it met at the call of the sovereign.  When the sovereign needed/wanted to summon parliament, he/she issued two writs: the writ of summons to the lords spiritual and temporal, which commanded them to appear in parliament, and the writ of election, which commanded the sherrifs of the counties to hold an election for members of the commons.


 * Nowadays, if the prime minister wants to dissolve parliament, he/she will ask the Queen after determining a date for elections. After proclaiming the dissolution, the Queen then issues the writ of election to the constituencies, which is the formal ordering of an election for MPs.  The election authorities in each constituency after conducting the election make a return on the writ specifying who the MP is for the consitutency.  Up until the House of Lords Act, the Queen would also issue the writ of summons to the lords spiritual and temporal, just like in the past.  Today, they are only issued to the life peers, the bishops, the Earl Marshal, the Lord Great Chamberlain, and the 90 peers which actually sit.


 * When vacancies occur in the commons during the parliament, writs of election to fill them are issued under the advice of the Speaker of the House of Commons.


 * Dropping the writ may not actually mean the issue of these writs but may refer to something else. However, these writs are issued each time parliament restructures itself.  If you check out the news articles discussing the upcoming parliamentary elections in Canada, they use drop the writ all the time.  It has precedent, though what it really means may be different then these legal formalities. Pmadrid 09:24, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, that is most interesting. I have had a trawl around Halsbury's Laws on the subject and when I have time will transfer some of the learning to the main article. However I am now pretty sure that "dropping the writ" isn't used in the UK any more. Google's first few pages of hits seem to be mostly colonial parliaments. As I said, it was a phrase never used in constitution lectures, so I suspect its now obsolete in the UK, albeit not in Canada. What does anyone else think? Francis Davey 22:16, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Disuse in England

 * The term 'writ' has now largely passed into disuse in English law.

True enough, but what might be worth mentioning is that it certainly hasn't passed into informal disuse, and nor has it disappeared from the media - partly for fairly obvious reason that "writ" is much shorter for headline-writers, but it's still seen in body text as well. This BBC story, dated 2006-05-30, is a good example. Loganberry (Talk) 12:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

What is a writ
the wiki wording sort of assumes you already know what a writ is which is unfortunate. start the US law section with a brief definition of what a writ is. I deduced that it was a court order of sorts but it was not clearly stated 85.83.19.103 (talk) 22:25, 11 June 2009 (UTC)Dan Frederiksen

Moved to talk
This sounds like a joke to me (a cute one) but I moved it to talk unless someone can find a citation that this rewording was attempted RJFJR (talk) 18:46, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Early efforts to replace writ of habeas corpus with writ of have the body never caught on.

Other writs
There is a section 'other writs' but it isn't clear which jurisdictions use these. RJFJR (talk) 18:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I moved them under US because the section on English law says they have eliminated the profusion of writs and the other section is Indian law which has its won list (and several of the types of writs listed are ones I've seen mentioned in reading WP articles on US court proceedings.) RJFJR (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A few of them remain usable in the English court system. The main clean up was of original writs, although others have also been tidied up. Many of these writs are historic though and have their origin in English law so some more reorganisation (or explanation) may be helpful. I nearly fell of my chair reading about Ne exeat republica though. Americans can be so cutely quaint. Francis Davey (talk) 09:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

United States Law
There appears to by an omission or typo in the 5th bullet point of this section.

The United States district courts normally follow state- in the United States federal courts but are almost never used in practice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdyornot (talk • contribs) 22:35, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Images
All three images on this page are of the same writ, one of which is used twice. It would be nice if additional documents were added, in particular to make the redundant use of one image unnecessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.30.126.28 (talk) 02:12, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

This article is a mess
It goes way too deep too fast into specific examples on what is a notoriously difficult topic. It needs to start with the high-level, big picture overview: A writ is a formal written order, historically issued pursuant to the authority of the English sovereign. It was originally developed as an instrument of the English administrative state. However, the Crown also allowed private litigants to purchase writs to use against each other--that is, allowing private parties to invoke the authority of the King to summon others to the royal courts to face justice--thereby giving rise to the use of writs as a core component of English procedural law. Thus, any discussion of writs must distinguish between writs issued in the course of government administration and writs issued in litigation in the courts.

At some point this article needs to be drastically revised but I don't have the time to do that right now. Coolcaesar (talk) 19:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)